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LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 



50 




LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

BEING AN ACCOUNT OF THE EARLY 

INHABITANTS OF THIS ISLAND AND 

THE MEMORIALS WHICH THEY HAVE 

LEFT BEHIND THEM 



BY 



BERTRAM C. A. WINDLE 

D.Sc, M.D., M.A., Trinity College, Dublin 
F.S.A. (Lond. & Irel.) 

DEAN OF THE MEDICAL FACULTY AND PROFESSOR OF ANATOMY 
MASON COLLEGE, BIRMINGHAM 



WITH MAPS, PLANS, AND ILLUSTRATIONS 



New York: G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
London: D. NUTT 

1897 






EARLY BRITAIN 

showing 

ROMAN ROADS & PLACES OF IMPORTANCE 
mentioned in tin* Book 

Jny/i../. . Vtlrs 

llntriaii Heads 
Die mmiefn r./wiV.i/r.-if- 







o.m. 



Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson &■» Co. 
At the Ballantyne Press 



TO 
MY WIFE 



PREFACE 

The subject-matter of the following pages was arranged 
originally for a course of lectures which was delivered 
at Mason College, Birmingham. The object of that 
course, as of this book, was to present a brief but clear 
account of the different races which inhabited this country 
in prehistoric and early historic times, and to describe 
the chief relics which each has left behind it. It is hoped 
that this little book may be serviceable as an introduction 
to the study of Prehistoric Archaeology, and to the larger 
works on that subject by Sir John Evans, Professor Boyd 
Dawkins and others, the names of which will be found 
in the Appendix. In order to add to its practical value 
some attempt has been made to supply a list of objects, 
arranged in counties, by which the facts alluded to in 
the body of the work may be more fully illustrated. These 
also will be found in an Appendix. 

For permission to use certain of the figures with which 
the book is illustrated, the author has to thank Sir John 
Evans, the Councils of the Scottish Society of Antiquaries 



viii PREFACE 

and of the Archaeological Society, Mr. John Murray, Colonel 
Wood-Martin, Mr. W. R. Hughes and Messrs. Kegan Paul 
The author cannot but express his gratitude also to his 
friend and publisher, Mr. Alfred Nutt, for the great interest 
which he has taken in the book, and for the many valuable 
suggestions which he has made whilst it has been passing 
through the press. 

Birmingham, May i, 1897. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER I 

INTRODUCTORY HISTORICAL SKETCH 

Introduction — Relics of past races in tale, custom, and law — Man 
and the Glacial Period — Palaeolithic and Neolithic Races — The 
Celts and the Bronze Age— The Roman Occupation — The Saxon 
Invasion — Struggle between the Britons and the Saxons — The 
fall of Britain— The Danes Pp. 1-18 

CHAPTER II 

PALEOLITHIC MAN 

Wild animals of the period— Flint implements — Method of their 
manufacture— Relics of the River-Drift Man — The Cave- 
dweller — Kent's Hole — Early Art — Physical characteristics of 
the Cave-Man — His social life .... Pp. 19-34 

CHAPTER III 

NEOLITHIC MAN 

Conditions of the land — Wild animals — Pit dwellings — Stone axes 
and arrow-heads — Their folk-lore — Manufactories — Art — Long 
barrows — Dolmens — Significance and folk-lore — Objects buried 
with the dead — Trephined skulls — Druidism — Language — 
Bodily remains — Social life Pp. 35-67 



x CONTENTS 

CHAPTER IV 

THE BRONZE PERIOD 

The Aryan Race — Goidels and Brythons— Early accounts of Britain 
— Lake-dwellings — Crannogs— The Glastonbury Lake-village — 
Pile-dwellings — Bronze Celts — Swords — Personal ornaments — 
Casting of bronze — Pottery — Clothing . . Pp. 68-92 



CHAPTER V 

THE BRONZE PERIOD— continued 

Camps — Maiden Castle — Yarnbury — Caer Caradoc — Bridges — 
Stonehenge — Avebury — The Rollright Stones — Folk-lore — 
Menhirion — Round Barrows— Celtic religion— Godiva's ride- 
Physical characters — Social life .... Pp. 93-118 



CHAPTER VI 

THE ROMAN OCCUPATION OF BRITAIN 

Condition of the country — Forests — Wild animals — Trackways — 
Roman roads — Camps — Cities — Silchester — Uriconium — 
Corinium .Pp. ng-^ 



CHAPTER VII 

THE ROMAN OCCUPATION OF BRITAIN— continued 

The Roman city— Cemetery — Pom cerium— Amphitheatre — Gates 
—Forum and Basilica— Shops— Baths— Temples— Christian 
Church— Barracks Pp. i37- I 54 



CONTENTS xi 

CHAPTER VIII 

THE ROMAN OCCUPATION OF BRITAIN— continued 

The Roman villa — Hypocausts— Tesselated pavements — Chedworth 
Villa — Mines— Method of burial — The Roman Wall — Nature of 
the Roman Occupation Pp. 155-170 

CHAPTER IX 

THE SAXON OCCUPATION 

The Christian Church in Britain — Intermixture of Races— Saxon 
Earthworks — Relation to subsequent Norman Castles — Offa's 
Dyke — Methods of burial — Weapons and other objects found in 
Graves — Art— Church architecture . . . Pp. 1 71-186 



CHAPTER X 

TRIBAL AND VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 

The Tribal Community — Its members — The strangers living with 
it— The Chieftain — His house — The village community — The 
Hall — Evolution of the Manor-house— The Lord of the Manor — 
How a Manor was formed — The inhabitants of the Village — 
The land around it — Its allotment —The Manor of Westminster 
at the Conquest — The island of Heisgeier . . Pp. 187-206 



CHAPTER XI 

SOME TRACES OF THE PAST RACES OF BRITAIN 

Traces in Language — Physical characteristics — Names of Places. 

Pp. 207-219 



xii CONTENTS 

APPENDIX A 

List of Places Pp 221-227 

APPENDIX B 

List of Books Pp. 228-229 



INDEX 231 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

Map of Early Britain, showing roads and places of importance. 

Frontispiece 
i. River- Drift Implement (Evans, "Ancient Stone Imple- 
ments") 21 

2. Cave Implement (do.) 27 

3. Harpoon Head (Scot. Ant. Catalogue) .... 28 

4. Hunting of Horses (Joly, " Man before Metals") . . 29 

5. The Mammoth (do.) 30 

6. Plan of a Village Settlement 37 

7. Neolithic Celt (Scot. Ant. Catalogue) 39 

8. A Celt in its Handle (Evans, "Ancient Stone Implements") 40 

9. Perforated Stone Hammer (Scot. Ant. Catalogue) . . 41 

10. Flint Arrow-Heads (Evans, " Ancient Stone Implements ") 43 

11. The same in Shaft (do.) 43 

12. Spindle Whorl (Scot. Ant. Catalogue) .... 48 

13. A Long Barrow 49 

14. An uncovered Dolmen (Joly, " Man before Metals ") . . 50 

15. A Breton Dolmen 50 

16. Kits Coty House (" A Week's Tramp in Dickensland," by 51 

W. R. Hughes) 53 

17. Plan of Chambers in Uley Barrow 54 

18. Concentric Circles cut on Stone (Scot. Ant. Catalogue) . 57 

19. Position of Skeletons in a Barrow (after a figure in Jewitt's 

" Grave-Mounds and their Contents ") 59 

20. Trephined Skull (Joly, " Man before Metals ") . . .72 

21. Restoration of aCrannog (Wood-Martin, " Pagan Ireland") 

22. Section of a Crannog (do.) 74 

23. Plan of a Crannog (do.) 75 



Handbook for 



xiv ILLUSTRATIONS 

24. Plan of a Crannog (Wood-Martin, " Pagan Ireland ") 

25. Flat Bronze Celt (Evans, "Ancient Bronze Implements 

26. Flanged Bronze Celt (do.) . 

27. Winged and Ringed Bronze Celt (do.) 

28. Socketed Bronze Celt (do.) 

29. Bronze Celt in Handle (do.) 

30. Bronze Pins (do.) .... 

31. A Torque (do.) 

32. Bronze Caldron (Scot. Ant. Catalogue) 

33. Stone Mould for Casting Celts (do.) . 

34. Pottery of the Bronze Age (do.) . 

35. General Plan of Stonehenge (Murray's 

Wiltshire) 

36. Conjectural Restoration of Stonehenge (do 

37. Trilithons at Stonehenge (Barclay, " Stonehenge ") . 

38. Plan of Stonehenge as it is (Murray's Handbook) 

39. Trilithons at Tripoli (Barclay, " Stonehenge ") . 

40. Avebury, restoration (Murray's Handbook for Wiltshire) 

41. Avebury, Plan of District (do.) 

42. Menhir, the Kingst one (" Folk-Lore ") 

43. Round Barrows (after a plate in Barclay's "Stonehenge 

44. Plan of Silchester 

45. Remains of Wall of Uriconium 

46. A Roman Tombstone . 

47. The Roman Gateway at Lincoln .... 

48. Plan of Forum and Basilica at Silchester (after the plan in 

Anhaologia) .... 

49. Roman Pottery (Durobrivian) . 

50. Roman Pottery from Upchurch 

51. Samian Pottery (Nos. 46, 47, 49, 50 and 51, after figures 

in Wright's "Celt, Roman, and Saxon ") 

52. An Oculist's Stamp (Scot. Ant. Catalogue) 

53. The Roman Bath at Bath .... 

54. A Tablet from the neighbourhood of the Roman Wall 

(Scot. Ant. Catalogue) 

55. Roman Hypocaust and Pavement (Wright) 

56. Orpheus from a Tesselated Pavement 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



57. A Lion from the same (after illustrations in the Archceolo 

gical Journal) 

58. Plan of Chedworth Villa . 

59. Interior of a Roman Tomb (Wright) 

60. Plan of a Buhr (after a figure in Clarke, 

Military Architecture ") 

61. Rectangular Norman Keep 

62. Norman Shell-keep 

63. Anglo-Saxon Interment (after a figure in the 

Craniorum) 

64. Anglo-Saxon Fibulae (Wright) . 

65. Anglo-Saxon Tumblers (Wright) 

66. Anglo-Saxon Manuscript (after a figure in Westwood' 

"Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts") 

67. Bradford-on-Avon Church (after an illustration in the 

Archceologkal Journal) . 



Mediaeval 



Thesaurus 



159 

161 
165 

175 

177 
177 

179 
182 
183 

185 

186 



LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

CHAPTER I 

INTRODUCTORY HISTORICAL SKETCH 

Introduction — Relics of past races in tale, custom, and 
law — Man and the Glacial Period— Palaeolithic and Neo- 
lithic races — The Celts and the Bronze Age— The Roman 
occupation— The Saxon invasion— Struggle between the 
Britons and the Saxons— The Fall of Britain — The Danes. 

England is full of the traces of her successive occupants, 
material relics of earth and stone, and less tangible, but not 
less real, relics of custom and tradition. As an American 
writer has remarked, the country is in fact one vast museum, 
on whose shelves lie objects illustrative of the history and 
genius of the races, out of which has been built up that 
complex entity, the Englishman of to-day. 

It is also true that just as those shelves of a museum which 
relate to the remotest periods are those in which the least 
interest is shown by the casual visitor and which are least in- 
spected by him, so those objects in this country which date 
back to the earliest periods are, with a few obvious excep- 
tions such as Stonehenge, far less popular than the erections 
of a later period. Perhaps this is scarcely to be greatly 
wondered at ; the stately cathedral or the ruined abbey, the 
historic castle or the royal palace, are certainly more striking 
objects and far more calculated to appeal to the imagination 

A 



2, LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

than the obscure earthwork, overgrown with trees and nettles, 
or the ring of weathered and half-buried stones lying far away 
from the homes of man on some hillside. Yet these relics 
of early races possess at least one element of interest in 
greater measure than their later rivals, that of mystery — 
mystery as to their builders, mystery as to their object, per- 
haps in some instances, most of all as to the manner of their 
erection. In the pages of this book it is intended to present 
briefly an account of the races which successively occupied 
this island in prehistoric and eohistoric times, and to point 
out the remains which still exist as evidences of their labours, 
so that the traveller when he meets with a tumulus, a dolmen, 
or a camp, may be able to form an idea, limited though it 
may be by the present imperfect state of our knowledge, as 
to the period, builders and significance of each. Topics 
related to objects of this kind belong to the domain of 
Archaeology proper, and in dealing with them our greatest 
difficulty will be to make a selection from the crowd of in- 
teresting objects which present themselves for description. 

Further, it has already been mentioned that besides the 
tangible and visible remains just alluded to, there are many 
other relics in tale, in custom, and even in law, which when 
properly examined turn out to be as much the property of 
bygone inhabitants of this country as the tombs and 
temples which they erected. In many cases, indeed, such 
tales are actually connected with the cromlechs and other 
remains of these prehistoric races, visible and legendary relics 
thus being closely linked one with the other. Viewed from 
this standpoint, the child's game and the legal custom assume 
a remarkable and at first unsuspected interest, and carry us 
back to an age when they possessed a significance, perhaps 
religious, perhaps ceremonial, long since forgotten and 
traceable, if traceable at all, only with great difficulty. Let 
us take as an example of a legal method the manners in 
which, under ancient tenures, property is still distributed in 



INTRODUCTORY HISTORICAL SKETCH 3 

cases of intestacy. It may go to the eldest son by the method 
of primogeniture, a plan which is quite easily explicable. 
Or it may be distributed amongst all the sons, or in default 
of them, amongst all the daughters, by the method of gavel- 
kind, an arrangement which can also be readily accounted 
for. But in certain places, both in England and on the 
Continent, the property descends to the youngest son, a 
method which is called Junior-right or, in this country, 
Borough English. How is this curious system to be 
accounted for ? Is it because the youngest was presumably 
the least able to take care of himself, or because it was sup- 
posed that by the time of their parent's demise all the other 
sons had already received their portions ? It is very hard to 
say. Possibly Mr. Elton is right when he surmises that the 
custom may have been derived from some domestic religion, 
based on a worship of ancestors and a consequent reverence 
for the hearth-place, but belonging to a people who saw no 
natural pre-eminence in the eldest. Possibly Mr. Gomme's 
view is correct, and it is due to peculiarities in the Germanic 
settlement of England, which sent the elder born out to 
found new homesteads and naturally reserved the father's 
homestead for the younger son (Archceologia, " On Archaic 
Conceptions of Property," vol. i. 1887). In any case there 
can be no doubt that a custom which at length has passed 
into law, originated at a period of our history so remote as 
to be beyond the range of written records. 

Again it seems clear that many of the most popular 
children's games were originally serious and even solemn 
ceremonies, which have undergone a gradual process of 
degradation from their first state, through that of half-joke, 
half-earnest to their present lowly position. For instance, 
that well-known terror of the Bank Holiday, " Kiss in the 
Ring," seems to be a relic of the early form of marriage by 
choice or selection. One of its variants, for there are 
several ways in which it is played, presents this peculiar 



4 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

feature, that the head of the girl standing in the centre of 
the ring is covered with a shawl, and a portion of the game 
turns upon her recognition by another player. This in- 
dicates, thinks Mrs. Gomme, that "in this game we have 
preserved one of the ceremonies of a now obsolete marriage- 
custom — namely, the disguising of the bride and placing 
her among her bridesmaids and other young girls, all having 
veils or other coverings alike over their heads and bodies. 
The bridegroom has to select from among these maidens the 
girl whom he wished to marry, or whom he had already 
married, for until this was done he was not allowed to 
depart with his bride. This custom was continued in sport 
as one of the ceremonies to be gone through after the 
marriage was over, long after the custom itself was discon- 
tinued. This ordeal occurs in more than one folk-tale, and 
it usually accompanies the incident of a youth having 
travelled for adventures, sometimes in quest of a bride. He 
succeeds in finding the whereabouts of the coveted girl, but 
before he is allowed by the father to take his bride away he 
is required to perform tasks, a final one being the choosing 
of the girl with whom he is in love from among others, all 
dressed alike and disguised. Our bridal veil may probably 
originate in this custom." A further instance of the com- 
plete alteration of character which befalls a custom as it 
passes through the various stages of its downward evolution, 
may be studied in the well-known child's song, " Green 
Gravel," which, little as the children or their mothers suspect 
it, is, according to the authority just cited, evidently a 
funeral game. The green gravel and green grass indicate 
the locality of the scene j " green " as applied to the gravel 
meaning probably, freshly disturbed, just as a green grave 
means a freshly-made grave. The tenant of the newly-made 
grave is the well-loved lady of a disconsolate lover, and 
probably the incidents of washing and dressing the corpse, 
putting an inscription on the place where it is laid, and 



INTRODUCTORY HISTORICAL SKETCH 5 

singing the dirge are indicated in some of the numerous 
variants of this popular game. Facts such as those which 
have been just cited belong to the realm of folk-lore, the 
youngest and perhaps not the least fruitful member of the 
Archaeological family. The callow youth of this branch was 
not unmarked by the excesses which have characterised the 
intellectual minority of other subjects, but now that it has 
attained years of discretion, all are beginning to recognise 
how much valuable information it is capable of affording, 
when properly used,* as to the early customs and ideas of 
this and other countries. 

There is one other relic which some, indeed most of 
these early races have left, a relic the most important, the 
most durable, and by far the most elusive, and that is their 
blood, which circulates in varying combinations in the 
different members of that highly complex race which now 
peoples the British Islands. Some attempt will be made 
to indicate the lines upon which the problem of English 
ethnology has been attacked and the results which have 
been attained. But it must be admitted that we are here 
treading upon more difficult and treacherous ground than is 
the case with either of the other two lines of inquiry, replete 
with difficulties though they are. 

For the sake of obtaining a clear idea of the different 
races whose remains are to form the subject of this book, 
and particularly with the view of securing an accurate 
knowledge of their order and relation to one another, it 
will be well to consider them from a historical standpoint 
before dealing with them upon the lines which have been 
just indicated. 

It is by no means certain at what period man first took 
possession of this land, and much discussion has raged 
around the question as to whether there were human 
occupants of this country in the pre- glacial period or not. 
This is not the place in which to deal exhaustively with the 



6 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

subject of the Glacial period ; it must, therefore, suffice 
to say that during the Pleistocene era the northern and 
north-western parts of Europe as far south as the 50th 
parallel of north latitude, were covered with a huge sheet of 
ice, from the edges of which great rivers flowed, just as 
rivers do now from the glaciers of Switzerland. This epoch 
was not one of continuous intensity, but was interrupted by 
periods of lesser cold, during which the ice-sheet receded 
and the mountain glaciers intruded less upon the plains. 
The relics of this age are found scattered over these islands 
in the shape of huge heaps of stone or moraines, boulders 
and erratic blocks and beds of clay, for the origin and sig- 
nificance of which the reader must consult some geological 
text-book. In certain places, and notably in some caves, 
implements of stone of a deep yellow colour have been 
found, which, though exceedingly rude in manufacture, have 
yet undoubtedly been shaped by the labour of man's hands. 
There can be no doubt that whether pre- or post-glacial, 
these implements must be looked upon as some of the 
earliest objects made by mankind in this country which 
have as yet been discovered. They have been found over- 
laid by what some authorities consider to be glacial drift, 
from which it has been urged that they are pre-glacial in age 
and point to the existence of human beings in this country 
at that extremely remote period. Others have, however, 
taken a different view of the matter, which is one to be de- 
cided, firstly, by the determination of the exact date of the 
superjacent deposit, which is a question for geologists ; and, 
secondly, by the resolution of the doubt as to whether 
implements and deposit occupy their original relation 
to one another, for it must be remembered that the 
discovery of the tools under the clay is not an absolute 
proof that the former were fabricated before the latter 
was deposited. It is, perhaps, not unfair to say that the 
general tendency of scientific opinion at the present day 



INTRODUCTORY HISTORICAL SKETCH 7 

is to deny the existence of human beings in the pre-glacial 
epoch. 

It may be well thus early in the consideration of the sub- 
ject to direct the reader's attention to the invaluable inform- 
ation which is afforded to us by the implements, whether of 
stone or of other material, which have been left behind by 
extinct races. As will be seen more fully in later chapters, 
it is on such materials that we have to rely very largely for 
our information as to the habits and state of civilisation of 
the people of each period; indeed it may be said that 
they supply the only information which we possess about 
some of them. The recognition of the purposes of such 
implements does not depend upon guess-work, but upon the 
fact that savage races are very much the same, with the 
necessary allowances for differences in climate and surround- 
ings, all the world over. Thus the implements which are 
prehistoric with us, are in actual use, or were so until a 
quite recent period, amongst less civilised races. By a com- 
parative study of implements from various parts of the 
world we are able to form not merely accurate ideas of the 
uses of those which we discover amongst the relics of the 
bygone peoples of our own islands, but can take a further 
step, and in some instances, form conclusions, though it 
must be admitted with less certainty, as to the customs, 
habits, and even the religious ideas of their makers. 

After the Glacial age had passed away, but at a time when 
the British Isles were still connected with the continent of 
Europe by dry land, the first undoubted immigrants made 
their appearance in the shape of the so-called Palaeolithic 
race, a race known almost exclusively by the weapons which 
they manufactured. Some of these implements have been 
discovered amongst river-drifts, and these have been assigned 
to an earlier period than other and similar remains which 
have mostly been found in caves. Thus the Palaeolithic 
race is divided into the men of the river-drift and the cave- 



8 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

men. The remains of the former are found only as far 
north as a line drawn from Bristol to the Wash, whilst those 
of the latter have a more extensive area, being met with in 
the northern parts of Yorkshire. 

It is quite impossible to say at what period of time these 
wanderers first reached this country, for though many 
^elaborate researches have been made in the hope of assign- 
ing a definite date for the advent of man in England, the 
question remains as doubtful as ever, and the most widely 
varying dates are still assigned by different authorities. 

It is as difficult to say what was the fate of this race, for it 
seems impossible to decide whether it became extinct before 
the arrival of its successors, or whether it became fused with 
them. Some authorities consider that there is no evidence 
of the existence of the direct descendants of Palaeolithic man 
among the osteological remains of the Neolithic period or 
of a later date in Britain, and that he seems to have become 
as extinct as many of the animals which were contemporary 
with him. This, however, may not be the case with respect 
to other parts of Europe, whilst Professor Boyd Dawkins 
and some American anthropologists believe that Palaeolithic 
man still has representatives on the American continent. 
During or after his occupation of the land, these islands 
became detached from the continent of Europe, and geo- 
graphical conditions substantially the same as those which 
now exist became established. Thus the succeeding bands 
of immigrants which poured in successive waves over the 
country must have made their way to these shores in 
boats. 

The first of these races is called Neolithic from the 
nature of their implements, and their prior occupation 
of various parts of the Continent has been established by the 
discovery of their characteristic weapons and instruments in 
diverse localities. The extent of this country colonised by 
the Neolithic race was much greater than that occupied by 



INTRODUCTORY HISTORICAL SKETCH 9 

their predecessors, for their remains have been found as far 
north as the Orkneys, and it is most probable that they 
reached Ireland, though it appears doubtful whether they 
did so until a later period. The men of this race are variously 
spoken of as Iberians, Ivernians or Euskarians, and they are 
believed to have been closely related ethnologically with the 
Basques of Spain and France, whose remarkable language 
may be the lineal descendant of the otherwise wholly, 
or almost wholly, lost tongue of the Neolithic inhabitants of 
Britain. This race certainly did not entirely disappear 
either before or at the advent of the next wave of immigra- 
tion, for we possess abundant evidence to show that the 
latter partly assimilated and partly drove further westward 
the occupants of the country whom they found in possession 
on their arrival. 

This, the third race of inhabitants, was that of the Celts, 
and there is this important distinction between them and 
their predecessors, that whilst the Celts belonged to the 
Aryan family, their predecessors were of non-Aryan stock. 

Without entering into the controversies as to the place of 
origin of the Aryan race, or the exact relation between Aryan 
races and races with an Aryan speech, it will be sufficient 
here to say that there are in Europe seven Aryan languages 
— viz., Greek, Latin, Celtic, Teutonic, Slav, Lettic and 
Albanian, and that there are three in Asia — viz., Indie (in- 
cluding Sanskrit), Iranic (including Persian), and Armenian. 
The race with which we are now dealing spoke a Celtic 
tongue, and was the first to introduce the knowledge of 
metals to this country, for though they were still ignorant of 
the use of iron they knew how to manufacture articles 
in bronze, for which reason the earlier part of their 
occupancy of the land is known as the Bronze age. The 
Celts appear to have descended upon this country in two 
separate invasions, separated from one another by a con- 
siderable period of time. The earlier of these invasions is 



io LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

known as the Goidelic or Gadhelic, and the people who 
took part in it are known as Goidels or Gaels. They are in 
point of speech the ancestors of the Gaelic speaking people 
of Ireland, the Highlands of Scotland and the Isle of Man, 
and their tongue existed in Wales and Devon as late as the 
sixth century or probably even later. They appear to have 
largely amalgamated with the Neolithic inhabitants whom 
they found in possession. 

The second invasion is known as the Brythonic, and those 
who were concerned in it as Brythons or Britons ; indeed it 
was from them that this country acquired the name of Britain.* 
Their speech still lives in that of the people of Wales and 
of Brittany ; until last century it also existed as the ancient 
Cornish language, now extinct as a living tongue; it was at 
a still earlier date that the Brythonic speech of Cumbria died 
out of use. The Brythons appear to have driven the com- 
bined Goidelic and Neolithic peoples to the western side of 
the island, so that at the time of the Roman invasion, the 
latter were to be found south-west of the Mendip Hills and 
the River Stour, in the regions north and south of the 
Sol way Firth and in Wales. In the last mentioned district, 
they were to be found in the northern part, to the west of a 
line drawn from Chester to the mouth of the River Mawd- 
dach, and in the south, west of the Severn and south of the 
Teme. They also occupied Ireland and the Isle of Man. 
The northern parts of Scotland were occupied by Ivemians 
and Picts, but the remainder, save for the part above 
mentioned near the Solway Firth, was peopled, like the 
greater part of England, by Brythons. 

The Romans, under Julius Csesar, had made a descent 
upon the island in the year 55 B.C., but it was more than 
one hundred years later, in the year 45 a d., that Claudius 
really undertook the reduction of the country. It is no 

* Prof. Rhys's view is that the name of the Brittones got mixed 
up with Prittania, a Brythonic form of the Goidelic Cruithneach. 



INTRODUCTORY HISTORICAL SKETCH n 

part of the purpose of this work to deal with the incidents 
of the campaigns by which Britain became a part of the 
Roman Empire. It is, however, important to note how 
essentially military in its character was the occupation of 
the country. Earthworks, great fortified cities, magnificent 
military roads, provided with change-houses and stations, 
not to speak of that remarkable triumph of military 
engineering, the Roman wall, sufficiently prove the truth 
of this statement. At the same time, the number and 
magnificence of the villas built for the occupation of Roman 
officials show that the settlement was regarded as permanent 
in its nature, and that the builders of these mansions con- 
sidered themselves firmly rooted in the soil of their adopted 
country. It is also important to remember that the Roman 
occupation was not accompanied by the extermination of 
the races which they found in occupation of the land on 
their arrival. Battles, it is true, there were between the 
Celts and the invaders, but the policy of the Romans, here 
as in other parts of their empire, obviously was, as far as pos- 
sible, to permit the natives to continue in occupation of their 
lands and properties, and in the practice of their own 
customs, whilst subject to and taxed by their foreign 
masters. The comparison has been justly made between 
the Roman occupation of Britain and our own occupation 
of India, for in both cases the intention of the conquering 
race has been, whilst firmly holding the dominions of which 
they had become possessed, to interfere as little as possible 
with the natives so long as they were content to submit 
quietly to the demands of their conquerors. Thus there 
was no such displacement of population during this period 
as had occurred previously or as took place during the next 
epoch. 

Early in the fifth century the Roman legions, whose 
presence was required nearer home, were finally withdrawn 
from England, and the Romanised Britons were left to 



12 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

defend their own shores as best they might, a task for which 
they were probably not too well fitted by centuries of de- 
pendence on alien troops. They were not long left in quiet 
possession of their country. It is probable that Britain had 
already been threatened by invaders from the north, for 
amongst the great Roman officials we find one whose title 
was Comes littoris Saxonici per Brittannias, and whose 
jurisdiction extended along the eastern coast from the Wash 
to Southampton Water. To this official, who may be re- 
garded as the ancestor of the Warden of the Cinque Ports 
of our own times, was entrusted the organisation of the 
district most exposed to the attacks of the Saxon pirates. 
It was at three points on this shore that the land was invaded 
by the northern warriors. 

First, the Jutes under chieftains to whom tradition has 
assigned the names of Hengist and Horsa, descended upon 
the shores of Kent in 449. They were followed, in 477, by 
the Saxons who, under Aelle, invaded the south coast near 
Chichester. It was not until nearly a hundred years later 
that the third band, to whom this country was to owe its 
later name of England, the Angles, descended under the 
leadership of Ida upon the coasts of Norfolk and Suffolk in 
the middle of the sixth century.* There was an important 
difference between this invasion and the two which preceded 
it. In the former cases it was only a detachment which had 
come over, but in the case of the Angles it was the entire 

* The dates and facts in the preceding paragraphs are those given 
by Green and other historians of a similar period. It is right, 
however, to say that Thurneysen, the latest investigator, considers 
that the main Germanic invasion took place in the early part of the 
fifth century. Moreover, it is true that we only hear of Ida in the 
middle of the sixth century, but that does not prove that he was 
the first invader of East Anglia. On the contrary, there is reason 
to believe that the Germans established themselves earlier in the 
North of England than in the South, in which case the attack on 
East Anglia would be a movement from Northumbria, rather than 
from the Continent. 



INTRODUCTORY HISTORICAL SKETCH 13 

population of the district, in the neighbourhood of what is 
now Magdeburg, still known as Angeln or the Engleland, 
which removed en masse to England, leaving its former 
territory absolutely denuded of inhabitants. 

The operations of these successive bands of invaders 
were very different from those of the Romans. Their object 
was not merely to occupy the country but to colonise it, and 
to accomplish this, they proceeded as far as possible to 
exterminate the Celtic tribes, who, after a long and stub- 
born resistance, were forced to retreat before their invaders. 
Something of what occurred we learn from the writings of 
the historian of the Celts, Gildas, himself a scion of that 
race, who wrote some sixty or more years after the first 
Germanic invasion. " The red tongue of flame licked up 
the whole land from end to end," he says, in his somewhat 
high-flown language, " till it slaked its thirst in the western 
ocean." And again of the inhabitants he says : " Some, con- 
strained by famine, came and yielded themselves up to their 
enemies as slaves for ever, while others, committing the 
safety of their lives to mountains, crags, thick forests, and 
rocky isles, though with trembling hearts, remained in their 
fatherland." The Venerable Bede, if, indeed, he is not 
simply repeating Gildas, speaks in much the same terms : 
" Some were slaughtered ; some gave themselves up to 
undergo slavery ; some retreated beyond the sea ; and some 
remaining in their own land lived a miserable life in the 
mountains and forests." But apart from this written evidence, 
we gain some idea of the straits to which the Celtic fugitives 
were reduced from the traces of their occupation which have 
been found in some of the caves to which they were driven 
for shelter. Amongst these, one of the most celebrated is 
that of the King's Scaur, near Settle, in Yorkshire, from the 
evidence collected in which by Professor Boyd Dawkins, 
Mr. Green has drawn the vivid picture which follows. " In 
primaeval ages," he says, "it had been the haunt of hyaenas 



i 4 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

who dragged thither the mammoths, the reindeer, the bisons, 
and the bears that prowled in the neighbouring glens. At 
a later period it became a home of savages, whose stone 
adzes and flint knives and bone harpoons are still embedded 
in its floor. But these, too, vanished in their turn, and this 
haunt of primitive men lay lonely and undisturbed until the 
sword of the English invaders drove the Roman provincials 
for shelter to the moors. The hurry of their flight may be 
gathered from the relics their cave-life has left behind it. 
There was clearly little time to do more than drive off the 
cattle, the swine, the goats, whose bones lie scattered round 
the hearth-fire at the mouth of the cave, where they served 
the wretched fugitives for food. The women must have 
hastily buckled their brooches of parti-coloured enamel, the 
peculiar workmanship of Celtic Britain, and snatched up a 
few household implements as they hurried away. The men, 
no doubt, girded on as hastily the swords, whose dainty 
hilts of ivory and bronze still remain to tell the tale of their 
doom, and hiding in their breasts what money the house 
contained from coins of Trajan to the wretched minims that 
showed the Empire's decay, mounted their horses to protect 
their flight. At nightfall all were crouching beneath the 
dripping roof of the cave or around the fire which was 
blazing at its mouth, and a long suffering began in which 
the fugitives lost year by year the memory of the civilisation 
from which they came. A few charred bones show how 
hunger drove them to slay their horses for food ; reddened 
pebbles mark the hour when the new vessels they wrought 
were too weak to stand the fire, and their meal was cooked 
by dropping heated stones into the pot. A time seems to 
have come when their very spindles were exhausted, and 
the women who wove in that dark retreat made spindle 
whorls as they could from the bones that lay about them." 

The cities which had been erected in considerable numbers 
by the Romans were sacked, burnt, and then left as ruins 



INTRODUCTORY HISTORICAL SKETCH 15 

by the Anglo-Saxons, who appear to have been afraid or at 
least unwilling to use them as places of habitation. An 
instance of this may be found in the case of Camboritum, 
the important Roman city which corresponded to our modern 
Cambridge, which was sacked by the invaders and left a ruin 
at least until the time of the Venerable Bede (673-735), 
who relates that the nuns of Ely, requiring a coffin for the 
remains of their foundress St. Aethelthryth, searched amongst 
its ruins and found there a marble sarcophagus which they 
used for the interment of the Saint. In later days these 
ruined walls and buildings still unoccupied were used as 
stone quarries, from which were obtained the materials for 
the construction of churches and abbeys, as in the case of 
Uriconium, the carved stones of which may be traced not 
only in the construction of Wroxeter Church itself, but also 
in that of Atcham, some little distance off, and in other 
edifices in the district.* It was the same with the villas of 
the Roman provincials, which, magnificent and even luxu- 
rious as they often were, fell into a state of ruin, and in that 
condition afforded perforce at times, an accommodation so 
inadequate and uncomfortable to belated travellers as to 
gain for them the name of Cold Harbours, a title met with 
in a number of places throughout the country where such 
buildings formerly existed. 

In the struggles w T hich took place between invaders and 
invaded the former were not always victorious. Thus at the 
battle of Mons Badonicus, which may have been Badbury 
Rings in Dorsetshire, a band of West Saxons, who were 
probably making their way towards the city which occupied 
the site of the present Dorchester, was vanquished by the 
Brythonic forces. This battle is traditionally associated 

* " Caistor was a city when Norwich was none, 
And Norwich was built with Caistor stone." 
This Norfolk rhyme alludes to the custom above mentioned, Caistor 
having been the Roman city of Venta Icenorum. 



16 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

with the name of the national Brythonic hero, King Arthur, 
various places in the south of England having been iden- 
tified with the sites of conflicts, in which he was concerned, 
by Dr. Guest. Too much reliance cannot, however, be 
placed upon this identification, since Mr. Skene has asso- 
ciated the same events with places in the south of Scotland. 
Again, at the battle of Fethanleah, now probably Faddiley 
in Cheshire, in 563, Ceawlin, King of the West Saxons, 
fresh from the destruction of Bassa's churches, now Bas- 
church in Shropshire, was vanquished by the Britons under 
Brocmael, Prince of Powys, a victory which for fifteen years 
checked the progress of the army of Wessex. 

But gradually the Britons were driven towards the western 
side of the island, until that portion of it, to which the name 
of Britain could be legitimately applied, was confined to a 
continuous strip, consisting in its northern part, of the district 
of Strathclyde, which extended, roughly speaking, from 
Loch Long in Scotland to the River Dee ; in its central 
part, of the present Principality, under the name of North 
Wales ; and in its southern, of West Wales, which included 
the present counties of Somerset, Devon and Cornwall. 

This continuous strip was cleft into three parts by two 
decisive battles. The first of these took place at Deorham, 
near Bath, in 577, when Ceawlin, King of the West Saxons, 
conquered the Britons under their three kings, Conmael, 
Kyndylan and Farinmael, and permanently separated North 
from West Wales. The second battle took place at Chester, 
in 607, when Aethelfrith, King of the Northumbrians, 
conquered Brocmael, Prince of Powys, divided Wales from 
Strathclyde, and finally put an end to the kingdom of 
Britain. 

It now only remains to see what became of the three dis- 
membered fragments. The most northerly portion, Strath- 
clyde, was in alliance with the little kingdom of Dalriada, 
founded by emigrants from Ireland, with which is associated 



INTRODUCTORY HISTORICAL SKETCH 17 

the fame of St. Columba of Iona. In 603, Aedhan, King of 
Dalriada, was conquered by Aethelfrith, King of the 
Northumbrians, at Daegstone, now Dawstone, after which 
event the British inhabitants of Strathclyde became tributary 
to their conquerors. West Wales, or Dyvnaint, extended 
from the Quantock Hills to the Land's End, and the first 
great inroad into it was made by Ine, who, in 710, conquered 
Geraint, the British king, pushed his army as far as the 
River Tone and there founded the city which we now know 
as Taunton. It was not, however, until 815 that Ecgberht, 
King of the West Saxons, made the conquest of Cornwall. 
It remains now only to speak of the district with which we 
now associate the name of Wales, and here it may be men- 
tioned that the name of Welsh was given to the Brythons 
by the Anglo-Saxons, and was derived by them from their 
word wealhas, meaning strangers or unintelligible people, a 
term met with in other parts than Wales, such as at Walling- 
ford, in Berks, " the ford of the strangers." North Wales, 
or Wales as we know it, had a more enlarged boundary 
than it now possesses until 799, when Offa, King of Mercia, 
pushed his way over the Severn, till then in its upper part 
the British boundary, drove the Prince of Powys from his 
town of Pengwyrn, and founded there the town in the scrub, 
Scrobbesbyrig, our present Shrewsbury. After this victory 
he constructed, according to a long-standing tradition, the 
dyke which bears his name. It is, however, possible, that 
it may be a work of much earlier date, which he utilised as 
a boundary line. 

Offa's dyke, of which extensive remains still exist, stretched 
from the mouth of the Dee to that of the Wye, including 
some portions of land now belonging to England, and 
stringent rules were laid down to prevent the Welsh from 
entering the English side of that boundary. 

It is important from an ethnological point of view to 
remember that whilst Britons and Saxons were at war with 

B 



18 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

one another in some parts of the land, in others they were 
on sufficiently good terms to act as allies against a common 
foe. Thus in 591, at the battle of Wanborough, on the 
edge of the Wiltshire downs above the Vale of White 
Horse, the Hwiccas under Ceolric joined with the Britons 
to conquer Ceawlin, King of the West Saxons. This 
is the first instance of an amalgamation which doubtless 
became more common as the intensity of the struggle be- 
tween the invaders and the invaded decreased and the 
conflicts between different groups of the former became 
more common. 

In 866 the Danes first descended upon East Anglia, and 
upon the history of their connection with this country it will 
not be necessary to dwell. For the purposes of future ethno- 
logical observations it is only necessary to remind the 
reader that, after the battle in which Alfred vanquished the 
Danes at Ethandun, now Edington, near Westbury in Wilt- 
shire, the country was divided between the two races, the 
Danes dominating that part of it which lies north of a line 
from the Thames to the mouth of the River Lea, and thence 
by Bedford and the River Ouse to the Watling Street, which, 
further west, formed the line of demarcation. Thus the 
Danes ruled over the north-east division of the island, whilst 
the English had London and the south-west. 



CHAPTER II 

PALEOLITHIC MAN 

Wild animals of the Period — Flint implements — Method 
of their manufacture — Relics of the River-Drift man — The 
Cave-dweller — Kent's Hole— Early Art — Physical Charac- 
teristics of the Cave-man — His Social Life. 

The classification of the early races to whom the use of 
metal was unknown, and whose implements were, therefore, 
mainly manufactured from stone, depends largely upon the 
character and finish of the weapons and tools which they 
left behind. Those which are assigned to the earlier age are 
much rougher and less finished than those of the later, so 
that we may regard the former, or Palaeolithic period, as 
that in which stones were roughly chipped to the shape 
most applicable to the purpose for which they were intended, 
and the latter, or Neolithic, as that in which the stones were 
sometimes chipped alone but chipped with greater skill and 
minuteness, sometimes ground down and polished so as to 
be not merely more sightly, but also more effective weapons. 
It is with the former age that we have now to deal, and 
the reader will remember that it has been subdivided into 
two periods, that of the river-drift and that of the cave- 
dwellers. At the time when England was in the possession 
of Palaeolithic man not merely was its physical geography 
very different from that of the present day, but the animals 
which inhabited it were more varied in kind and far more 
dangerous in character. Amongst the fauna of that period, 



2 o LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

were the hippopotamus, two kinds of elephant, and a like 
number of species of rhinoceros, a cave bear and a cave 
lion, the hyaena, bison, wild horse and reindeer. Palaeo- 
lithic man was thus provided with an abundance of animals 
to chase and to be chased by. It must be admitted that our 
predecessors of this period were but poorly provided for 
the pursuit of game of such size and ferocity. Their 
clothing, if indeed they did not for a large part of the year 
go naked, must have consisted solely of the dried skins of 
such animals as they were able to kill, and their weapons 
were confined to pointed stakes of wood and rude axes 
chiefly constructed of flint. The first implement of this 
kind which was ever recognised as being something more 
than a natural product, was discovered near Gray's Inn, 
London, about the year 1690, together with the remains of 
an elephant, with which it found a place in the Museum of 
Sir HansSloane, where it was described as "A British weapon 
found, with elephant's tooth, opposite to Black Mary's, near 
Grayes Inn Lane," but where its real antiquity was of course 
unsuspected. When the collection in question developed 
into the British Museum the specimen went with it, and 
there, too, it lay misunderstood, until one hundred and fifty 
years after its original discovery. It was then shown that it 
exactly corresponded with the specimens which had been 
discovered in the river gravels of Amiens and Abbeville. 

Such specimens having, after a long controversy and 
years of suspended opinion, been admitted to be the work 
of human hands, the true nature of the Gray's Inn flint was 
no longer a matter for doubt. This famous piece of flint 
is roughly triangular in shape, about six inches in length 
and four wide at its base, and has been fashioned by the 
process of chipping fragments off the original block until it 
assumed the shape which it now possesses. This and other 
implements of a similar kind belonging to this period 
do not appear to have been ever attached to any handle, 




Fig. i. — River-drift Stone Implement found at Reculver. (Sir John 
Evans.) It is made from a flint pebble, and the rounded end 
is well adapted for being held in the hand. 



22 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

but were held by the blunter end. They must have been 
formidable weapons in a hand-to-hand contest, and may 
possibly also have been used as missiles at a short range. 
Other and smaller pieces of flint have been found of an 
oval figure and worked so as to possess a cutting edge all 
round, others fashioned into what may have been scrapers 
for the preparation of skins, and again, others worked to a 
sharp point so as to be capable of serving as awls. Special 
manufactories appear to have existed for these stone tools 
in places capable of affording a supply of the necessary 
materials. Here have been found the tools which were 
used in the fashioning of the implements ; these consist of 
large blocks of flint which probably served the purpose 
of anvils, and other pieces of the same stone designed for 
shaping the fragments out of which the weapons were con- 
structed. The material employed was almost invariably 
flint, and this because that kind of stone has a form of 
fracture called conchoidal, which lends itself peculiarly to 
the process of the formation of weapons by flaking and 
chipping. Sir John Evans, after describing and comparing 
the methods adopted in the construction of their implements 
by races now or recently in the habit of making them 
in stone, thinks that the flake-implements may well have 
been made in a similar manner to that in which gun-flints 
are prepared, a pebble having been employed instead of the 
iron hammer of the modern flint-knapper. " At first sight," 
he says, " it would appear that the production of flakes of 
flint, without having a pointed metallic hammer for the 
purpose, was a matter of great difficulty. I have, however, 
made some experiments upon the subject, and have also 
employed a Suffolk flint-knapper to do so, and I find that 
blows from a rounded pebble, judiciously administered, are 
capable of producing well-formed flakes,, such as in shape 
cannot be distinguished from those made with a metallic 
hammer. The main difficulties consist first, in making the 



PALAEOLITHIC MAN 23 

blow fall exactly in the proper place ; and secondly, in 
so proportioning its intensity that it shall simply dislodge a 
flake without shattering it. The pebble employed as a 
hammer need not be attached to a shaft, but can be used 
without any preparation in the hand." 

The flakes, being gradually detached from a given lump 
of flint, must necessarily leave behind the central block, from 
which they had been separated. Such blocks are formed in 
the process of manufacturing gun-flints, and are called cores. 
Analogous structures are met with amongst the remains of 
the prehistoric manufactories. 

The process of manufacture in the case of the stone axes 
was somewhat similar, though here it was the central mass 
from which flakes were detached which was the object of 
the workman's attention and not the pieces which he re- 
moved from it in the process of its manufacture. Sir John 
Evans, dealing with the method of working this kind of 
weapon, says: "The hatchets seem to have been rough 
hewn by detaching a succession of flakes, chips, or splinters 
from a block of flint by means of a hammer-stone, and these 
rough-hewn implements were subsequently worked into a 
more finished form by detaching smaller splinters, also 
probably by means of a hammer, previously to their being 
ground or polished, if they were destined to be finished in 
such a manner. In most cases one face of the hatchet was 
first roughed out, and then by a series of blows, given 
at proper intervals along the margin of that face, the general 
shape was given and the other face chipped out. This is 
proved by the fact that in most of the roughly chipped 
hatchets found in Britain the depressions of the bulbs 
of percussion* of the flakes struck off occur in a perfect state 

* The bulb of percussion is the name given to a bulb or projection, 
of a more or less conical shape, at the end of the flake where the blow 
was administered by which it was detached. There is, of course, a 
corresponding hollow in the block from which it was dislodged. 



24 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

only on one face, having been partly removed on the other 
face by the subsequent chipping. 

" There are, however, exceptions to this rule, and more 
especially among the implements found in our ancient 
river-gravels. In some cases the cutting edge has been 
formed by the intersection of two convex lines of fracture 
giving a curved and sharp outline, and the body of the 
hatchet has been subsequently made to suit the edge." 

Amongst some savage races flaking is effected by pressure 
and not by percussion, the required portion being detached 
with the aid of an instrument of wood, bone or horn, which 
is skilfully pressed against the block of stone with the result 
that a thin flake or shaving flies off. Captain John Smith, 
whose name is associated with that of Pocahontas, the 
original Belle Sauvage, in speaking of the Indians of 
Virginia, appears to allude to this method of forming stone- 
flakes when he says : " His arrow-head he quickly maketh 
with a little bone, which he ever weareth in his bracept, of 
a splint of stone or glasse in the form of a heart, and these 
they glew to the end of their arrows." 

Amongst the various kinds of weapons and implements 
belonging to this period which have been discovered, one 
form, met with in such quantities during the Neolithic 
era, is wanting, and this is the arrow-head. From this we 
learn the significant fact, that so low was Palaeolithic man 
in the scale of culture as to be unacquainted with the use 
of the bow. 

He does not seem to have been quite devoid of personal 
ornaments, for beads of a fossil shell, the orifices of which 
have been artificially enlarged as if to admit a cord, have 
been met with amongst his remains. In this, as in other 
points, his state of civilisation corresponds with that of 
many of the lower races of mankind, in most of which some 
effort at personal adornment is met with. 

The bodily remains of the man of the river-diift are 



PALEOLITHIC MAN 25 

extremely scanty. On the continent, where implements of 
his manufacture have been discovered near Madrid in Spain, 
in Italy, Greece and Germany, as well as in Northern Africa, 
Palestine and India, some few portions of skeletons have 
been found which may be assigned to this period. 

At Eguisheim, near Colmar, Schaffhausen, a portion of a 
cranium was found with remains of the mammoth and other 
animals of a similar epoch. At Clichy, in the valley of the 
Seine, a skull and some bones were discovered at a con- 
siderable depth from the surface, in undisturbed strata, and 
lying with bones of the mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, horse 
and stag. The skulls which have been found are long and 
narrow in shape, and have very prominent ridges over- 
hanging their orbits. In the case of the limb bones of the 
Clichy skeleton, those of the thigh are characterised by 
possessing a remarkably strong ridge running down the 
posterior aspect, whilst the tibia or shin-bone is platycnemic, 
or flattened. "The few fragments which remain to us," says 
Professor Boyd Dawkins, "prove that at this remote period 
man was present in Europe as man, and not as an inter- 
mediate form connecting the human race with the lower 
animals.'' 

The relics of the cave-man have been much more exten- 
sively met with than those of his predecessor, many caverns 
in Yorkshire, Somersetshire and elsewhere having, on care- 
ful exploration, yielded valuable results. One of the best 
known of these is the cavern of Kent's Hole, which has been 
so carefully explored by Mr. Pengelly. This cavern was re- 
discovered in 1825, by the Rev. J. McEnery, who found 
that it had been entered by one "Robert Hedges of 
Ireland," who had inscribed his name with the date, 
February 20, 1688, on a boss of stalagmite. These words, 
when found, were, as they are now, "glazed over and 
partly effaced " by the gradual deposition of carbonate 
of lime. It has been attempted to use the thickness of the 



26 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

film of stalagmite which has accumulated since the inscrip- 
tion was made as a measure of the period of time which has 
elapsed since the earlier human relics were deposited in the 
cave. Such a method, however, like all others with a 
similar purpose put forward up to the present, is open 
to fallacies of various kinds and cannot be relied upon. 

Careful digging has revealed a series of deposits over- 
lying one another like strata; these are as follows, com- 
mencing with that nearest to the surface and working 
downwards. 

(i) Masses of limestone of various sizes up to pieces 
weighing one hundred tons. These have fallen from 
the roof and are more or less united to one another 
by the deposition of carbonate of lime. 

(2) The Black Mould, a layer from three inches to a foot 

in thickness, of decayed vegetable matter of a dark 
colour. 

(3) A layer of stalagmite of a granular character, which 

varies in thickness, being in some places as much 
as five feet, but in others no more than three 
inches. 

(4) The Black Band, met with only in one part of the 

cave, about four inches in thickness and composed, 
for the most part, of charred wood. 

(5) The Cave Earth, a light red loam. 

(6) A second layer of stalagmite, differing from the first by 

its crystalline nature; this is in some places twelve 
feet thick. 

(7) The Breccia, a dark red deposit of a sandy nature and 

free from limestone. 
The lower strata contain, as might be expected, the 
rudest implements, made exclusive of flint and chert. 
"They were much more rudely formed," says Mr. Pengelly, 
" more massive, less symmetrical in outline, and made not 
by operating on flakes but directly on nodules, of which 



PAL/EOLITHIC MAN 



27 



portions of the original surface generally remained, and 
which were probably derived from supra-cretaceous gravels 
existing in great volume between Torquay and Newton 
Abbot, about four miles from the cavern. It is obvious, 
however, that even such tools could not be made without 
the dislodgment of flakes and chips, some of which would 





Fig. 2. — Flint Implement from Kent's Cavern. (Sir John Evans.) 
Face and side views and section. 



be capable of being utilised, and accordingly a few remnants 
of this kind were met with in the breccia, but they were all 
of a very rude, simple character, and do not appear to have 
been improved by being chipped." 

In the cave earth a much more highly finished type of 
implement was found, some of the flints being lance-shaped 



28 



LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 



and possibly intended for spear-heads, others being oval. 
Scrapers and hammer-stones were also found, and with them 
implements of bone, amongst which may particularly be 
mentioned a needle, awls, and harpoons, constructed from 
the antlers of reindeer, one being barbed on both sides, 
the other only on one. In the black mould were found 
more modern objects, such as lumps of copper, bronze 
weapons and pottery of a Roman or pre-Roman type. From 
the various finds it is clear that this cave, and the same is 
true of others of a similar nature, was first inhabited by the 




Fig. 3.— Harpoon Head of Reindeer-horn, 4! in. long, with six 
barbs on one side and five on the other. Cave of Laugerie 
Basse, France. (Scot. Ant. Mus.) 



river-drift men, and afterwards, though at a much later 
period, by those to whom the name of cave-dwellers 
has been given. Finally, the British or Romano-British 
remains point to its occupation at a date much nearer 
to our own. 

A remarkable feature of the finds of this period which 
have been made on the continent— and the same is 
true, though in a much less degree, of those of our own 
country — is the occurrence of incised figures of animals, 
showing considerable powers of draughtmanship. Repre- 
sentations of the hunting of bisons and of horses have been 
found in the rock-shelter of La Madelaine, the latter also 
showing the figure of a man. The human form, it may 
be remarked, is but rarely found represented in these 
drawings, possibly because it may have been considered 



PALEOLITHIC MAN 



29 



unlucky to depict it, such a superstition being widely 
prevalent amongst primitive races throughout the world. 

A considerable variety of animals has, however, been 
depicted by the artist of this period, thus a drawing of 
a cave-bear was found upon a piece of schist in the cave of 
Massat, one of a seal on the canine of a bear at Duruthy, 
and of a whale on an antler at Laugerie Basse. 

A still more artistically treated subject is the picture of a 
reindeer, inscribed upon the horn of an animal of that 
species, found at Kesserloch, in which it is represented 




Fig. 4.— Figure of a Naked Man between two Horses Heads. 
A fish (probably an eel) is represented behind him. From the 
cave of La Madelaine in France. (Lartet and Christy.) 



as feeding by a pool surrounded by rushes. Perhaps 
the most celebrated of all is a representation of the 
mammoth on a piece of its own tusk, which was dis- 
covered at La Madelaine. This figure is evidently a sketch 
from the life, and portrays the long up-curved tusks, the 
mane, bristles and other appurtenances of this formidable 
creature. 

In England, a portion of a rib, with the figure of a horse 
incised upon it, has been found in Robin Hood's Cave in 
Derbyshire. Finally, a drawing upon the canine tooth 
of a bear, found in the cave of Duruthy in the Western 
Pyrenees, of a long gauntlet-like glove, shows that the 
cave-dweller fashioned, with the aid of his bone awl and 



PALEOLITHIC MAN 31 

needle, the skins of the animals which he killed into 
garments even of a somewhat complicated nature. 

It is important to bear in mind the nature of the art 
of the period, for rough as the implements must have been 
with which it was executed, the pictures show considerable 
spirit and a real artistic capacity. Very many persons of 
to-day would be pleased, if with all the aids with which 
art can supply them, they could produce so spirited a sketch 
as that of the reindeer by the pool, or the group of fighting 
reindeer represented in another drawing. 

Besides the instances mentioned above of incised work, 
there are many examples of the carvings of Palaeolithic man, 
in the shape of bone handles, representing animals of dif- 
ferent kinds. 

Whether drawings or carvings, the art of this period is 
particularly worthy of notice because it belonged to the 
cave-dwellers alone and perished with them, not being met 
with amongst the remains of later races. Professor Boyd 
Dawkins has called attention to the remarkable similarity 
between the art of Palaeolithic man and that of the Eskimos, 
and considers that this is one of several proofs of the identity 
of the two races. This theory, however, it is right to say, is 
not accepted by all ethnologists. 

It is necessary to have recourse to the discoveries made 
in continental caverns if we would study the physical 
characters of the cave-dweller. Amongst the relics which 
have been found, the most celebrated is that of the 
Neanderthal skull, which was discovered in a cave near 
Dusseldorf. This remarkable specimen, on the extreme 
antiquity of which much doubt has recently been thrown, 
was, when first studied, thought to belong to a class not now 
represented amongst living men. Further inquiry, however, 
has proved this view to be incorrect. Though unusual, this 
type of skull is not unknown amongst Europeans, whilst 
a race of Australians has received the name of Neandertha- 



32 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

loid, from the resemblance of their crania to that which 
is now under discussion. It is long and narrow and its 
vault is extremely low, but perhaps its most striking charac- 
teristic is the great projection of the ridges above the orbits 
and of the glabella or space between the eyebrows and just 
above the root of the nose. Two skeletons assigned to this 
period, the skulls of which are also narrow, have been found 
at Spey in Belgium. Here also the projection of the supra- 
orbital ridges and of the glabella is very marked. The 
ridges upon the bones of the skull for the attachment of 
muscles are strongly developed and the cranial vault is low 
and flattened. The lower jaw shows no prominence of the 
chin — in fact, it recedes somewhat from the region of the 
teeth. Dr. Garson, from whose writings these facts have 
been condensed, further states that " the stature of the 
Neanderthal skeleton as estimated from the length of the 
femur (or thigh-bone) is 1604 metres (5 ft. 3 in.), and from 
the humerus (or arm-bone) 2 cm. less; that of the Spey 
skeleton (there being only one of these in which the long 
bones could be measured), estimated from the femur and 
tibia (or shin-bone), is 1504 metres (4 ft. 11J in.) and from 
the femur alone, 1540 metres (5 ft. f in.). The long 
bones of both the upper and lower limbs of the Neander- 
thal skeleton are characterised by their unusual thickness, 
and the great development of the elevations and depres- 
sions for the attachment of muscles ; the articular ends of 
the femur are also of larger size than usual. The femur of 
the Spey skeleton is more arched forward than usual ; it is 
somewhat flattened from side to side in section, and its 
articular ends are of large size, especially the lower, in 
which there is enormous antero-posterior development of 
the articular surfaces of the condyles. The tibia is 
actually and proportionately very short, flattened laterally 
and therefore platycnemic. The bones generally are re- 
markable for their stoutness, and indicate that the muscles 



PAL/EOLITHIC MAN 33 

attached to them were large and powerful, especially those 
of the lower limb. 

"In regard to the platycnemism of the tibia, the Spey 
skeleton corresponds to the Laugerie Basse and Madelaine 
bones from the Perigord caves, and confirms in a very 
positive manner the evidence of their surroundings and 
relics, that Palaeolithic people were sons of the chase, as it 
is connected with the development of the tibialis posticus 
muscle, and not a race character." 

From the various observations which have been made at 
home and on the Continent, it is possible for us to form 
some kind of a picture, following on the lines indicated by 
Dr. Garson, of the social life of the cave-dweller. As 
might be inferred from his name, he lived, at least during 
the colder parts of the year, in those natural shelters in 
which his remains have been found. Here he lit his fire 
and brought the spoils of the chase to be cooked for his 
food. He was essentially a hunter and not an agricul- 
turist, like his successors in the land, yet he possessed no 
dog to assist him in securing his prey. The bison, the 
wild horse and the reindeer were the main objects of his 
chase, and he pursued them with flint-tipped spears and 
with daggers made of bone and possessing carved handles. 
He also captured fish with barbed harpoons. His clothing 
was made from the skins of the animals which he killed, 
and the different portions were sewn together with cords 
made of the sinews of the reindeer. For this purpose he 
employed the bone awls and needles which have been 
found in the deposits of the period, and with the same 
implements and from the same materials he made the 
long glove which he wore. He manufactured flint imple- 
ments for use in the chase and in war, as well as for 
domestic purposes, and he converted the bones of animals 
into various useful tools. The handles of many of these he 
decorated by carving them into the form of beasts, and his 

c 



34 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

taste for art is also shown by the figures which he engraved 
upon bones and pieces of stone. He was not indifferent to 
the adornment of his person, but, like other savages, made 
necklaces of shells, teeth and pieces of ivory and bone, and 
in all probability painted his body of a red colour with 
mineral pigments. He was short in stature and his beet- 
ling brows must have given him a fierce and repellent 
appearance. 



CHAPTER III 

NEOLITHIC MAN 

Conditions of the Land — -Wild Animals — Pit dwellings — 
Stone axes and arrow-heads — Their Folk-lore— Manu- 
factories — Art — Long Barrows — Dolmens — Significance 
and Folk-lore — Objects buried with the dead — Trephined 
skulls — Druidism — Language — Bodily remains — Social 
life. 

The conditions of the land had been changed prior to the 
advent of the race with which this chapter is concerned, so 
as to be approximately the same as those which now obtain. 
England had become severed by the sea from the Continent 
and from Ireland, but the area which it covered was some- 
what greater than at present, since parts of what were then 
dry land are now submerged beneath the waters of the sea. 
The Isles of Wight and Anglesey were still part of the 
mainland, the estuary of the Thames west of a line drawn 
north from Felixstowe was dry land, and the same was true 
of a great part of the Bristol Channel. Traces of the 
forests which covered this part of the country may still be 
seen at low tide near Minehead in Somersetshire and in 
other places. The northern and western coast lines of 
Wales extended for a greater distance than they now do, 
nearly the whole of the bay of Cardigan having been formed 
since this period by the submergence of the land, indeed a 
tradition to this effect still remains amongst the Welsh 
peasantry. 



36 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

The climate of the country was probably much damper 
than it is now, on account of the vast forests which covered 
the face of the earth ; and on account of the greater area of 
land it possessed more of a continental range of tempera- 
ture, with greater cold in the winter and greater heat in 
the summer. 

Many of the larger animals which existed during the 
epoch of Palaeolithic man had now become extinct, but 
others, some of which are now unknown in this country, 
still occupied the forests and marshes. There were " wild 
boars, horses, roes and stags, Irish elks, true elks and rein- 
deer, and the great wild ox, the urus, as well as the Alpine 
hare, the common hare, and the rabbit. Wolves, foxes and 
badgers, martens and wild cats were abundant ; the brown 
bear, and the closely allied variety the grisly bear, were the 
two most formidable competitors of man in the chase. 
Otters pursued the salmon and trout in the rivers, beavers 
constructed their wonderful dams, and water rats haunted 
the banks of the streams." (Dawkins.) 

It will be noticed that whilst many of the animals just 
mentioned are no longer to be found in England, only one, 
the Irish elk, has become absolutely extinct. 

From the insular character of the country it is obvious 
that the Neolithic peoples must have invaded it in boats, 
bringing with them their cattle and household stuffs, and 
starting from the nearest coast of the Continent, and by a 
similar means they must have reached Ireland from England. 
These boats were of the kind known as " dug-outs " — that is, 
each was composed of the trunk of a tree, sometimes as 
much as forty feet in length, hollowed out partly by the 
action of fire, and partly by the use of the stone axe. 
These boats must have been propelled by some kind of 
paddle, for there is no reason to suppose that any know- 
ledge of the use of sails existed at that period. 

Like their predecessors, the Neolithic people in some 



NEOLITHIC MAN 



37 



instances lived in caves, such as those at Cefn, near St. Asaph, 
in North Wales, but their most characteristic dwellings are 
those known as pit dwellings or hut circles. A group of 
these exists near Fisherton, in the Wylye Valley in Wilt- 




Fig. 6. — Plan of a part of a British Village, showing Ditches, 
Ramparts, and Cluster of Huts. 



shire, in which the excavations have been carried down to a 
depth of from seven to ten feet from the surface, passing 
through the superficial gravel to reach the subjacent chalk. 
Each pit or group of pits had a circular shaft by which it 
was entered, and below it expanded so as to have a diameter 



38 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

varying from five to seven feet, the upper portion being 
about three. The floor consisted of the chalk in which the 
excavation had been made, and was often raised slightly in 
the centre. Each was covered by a roof, which was composed 
of a kind of wattle and daub, that is of interlacing sticks 
plastered with clay, which was partly hardened by the action 
of fire. Groups of these pits are found on the tops or sides 
of hills or sometimes in valleys, surrounded by ramparts and 
ditches, and intersected also by ditches or drains, probably 
rendered necessary by the damp nature of the climate. It 
must be remembered that such villages or settlements, 
though characteristic of the Neolithic race, are not peculiar 
to the period which bears that name, for some of them were 
constructed and inhabited at a much later date. General 
Pitt-Rivers has carefully explored such a village of the 
Romano-British period at Woodcuts Common, near Rush- 
more in Dorsetshire. This village, which is included within 
ramparts, is divided into quarters by mounds and ditches. 
Within the area are many pits, in the neighbourhood of 
which have been found various bronze implements, Roman 
coins, pottery and skeletons of children and adults. 

The remains of the people of this period, which have 
been found in their dwellings and tombs, enable us to form 
a good idea of their condition and manner of life. The 
most characteristic weapon of the period is the stone axe or 
celt, a much more highly finished implement than that of 
the earlier Stone age, and carefully shaped so as to have 
usually a wide cutting edge at one end, the other being 
more pointed. These celts were often polished by friction 
against another stone. " In all cases," says Sir John Evans, 
"the grindstone on which they were polished was fixed and 
not rotatory, and in nearly all cases the striae running along 
the stone hatchets are longitudinal, thus proving that they 
were rubbed lengthways and not crossways on the grind- 
ing-bed. This is a criterion of some service in detecting 



NEOLITHIC MAN 



39 



modern forgeries. The grinding- stones met with in Den- 
mark and Scandinavia are generally of compact sandstone 
or quartzite, and are usually of two forms — flat slabs, often 







Fig. 7. —Neolithic Celt of finely polished greyish Flint, found in 
Scotland. (Scot. Ant. Mus.) Side and front view. 



worn hollow by use, and polygonal prisms, smallest in the 
middle, these latter having frequently hollow facets in which 
gouges or the more convex-faced hatchets might be ground, 
and sometimes rounded ridges such as would grind the 
hollow part of gouges. From the coarse striation on the 



4 o LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

body of most flint hatchets, especially the large ones, it 
would appear that they were not ground immediately on 
such fine-grained stones, but that some coarse and hard 
grit must have been used to assist the action of the grind- 
stone. M. Morlot thought that some mechanical pressure 
was also used to aid in the operation, and that the hatchet 
to be ground was weighted in some manner, possibly by 
means of a lever. In grinding and polishing the hollowed 




Fig. 8. — Stone Celt in original wooden handle, found in a peat 
moss in Cumberland. (Sir John Evans.) 

faces of different forms of stone axes, it would appear that 
certain rubbers formed of stone were used probably in con- 
junction with sand." 

Celts thus formed were sunk into a wooden stock, the 
smaller end being pushed through a hole, a wrapping of raw 
hide possibly making the connection more secure. Their 
discovery in the handled condition is naturally rare, since 
the wooden stocks have generally perished in the course of 
time : but one or two have been found in peat bogs, which 



NEOLITHIC MAN 



M 




Fig. 9. — Perforated Hammer-Stone found in Scotland. (Scot. Ant. ! 
Mus. ) The lower figure is a section of the hole, the narrowing 
of which at the centre shows that the boring was accomplished 
from both sides. The figure on the right is the side view. 



42 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

show the method in which celt and handle were united 
together. These must have been formidable weapons, 
whether against animals or in warfare, as we may gather 
from the discovery of the skeleton of a man in a cairn in 
Kirkcudbrightshire, called locally the tomb of King Aldus 
M'Galdus. The arm-bone of the skeleton had been cut 
clean through near the shoulder in some conflict, and in the 
severed bone was still sticking a fragment of the stone axe 
with which the injury had been done. 

Other stone axes were provided with a hole, bored 
through them by means of some rude drill, such as is used 
by savages, in which hole the handle was fixed. 

Some of these stone weapons, it seems more than pro- 
bable, were used for throwing ; indeed, the references to 
offensive weapons of this kind in Irish literature prove that 
they were specially constructed for the purpose in that 
country. They were there called the warrior's stone, the 
champion's flat stone, the semi-flat stone of a soldier cham- 
pion, or by some such title. In the record of the battle of 
the Ford of Comar, near Fore, in the county of Westmeath, 
which is supposed to have occurred in the century before 
the Christian era, Lohar's people all came with a champion's 
handstone stowed away in the hollow of their shields. 
Fergus "put his hand into the hollow of his shield, and 
took out of it the semi-flat stone of a soldier champion, and 
threw a manly cast and struck the hag (a Druidess) on the 
front of her head, which it passed through, and carried out 
of its own size of the brains at her poll." Eochaidh, the 
son of Enna Ceinnselach, carried his champion's flat stone 
in his girdle. 

Beside the axes with which we have been dealing, the 
Neolithic peoples made numbers of arrow-heads of stone, 
many of which are beautifully shaped and polished. They 
are sometimes barbed, and sometimes plain, tanged or tang- 
less, leaf-shaped or triangular, and may be compared with 



NEOLITHIC MAN 



43 



the stone arrow-heads made by the North American Indians. 
Indeed one of the most remarkable things about these 




Fig. io. — Flint Arrow-heads, English. (Sir John Evans.) 



arrow-heads is the extraordinary similarity to one another 
which they present in whatever part of the world they may 
be found, a proof that the minds of different races work 
on similar lines, as we can scarcely 
suppose that the patterns were trans- 
mitted from one part of the world to 
another. 

Succeeding generations of people, 
finding these remnants of a former 
race and ignorant of their real signi- 
ficance, have looked upon them, here 
and elsewhere, with a superstitious 
awe and veneration. Thus the stone 
celt came to be regarded as the 
hammer of Thor, the thunderbolt, 
" the all-dreaded thunderstone " of 
Cymbeline. Indeed the opinion that 
such axes fell from the skies in 

thunderstorms, which seems to have existed from a very early 
period, is met with in many parts of the world, for besides 
having been prevalent in all parts of Europe, it is found in 




Fig. ii. — Stone Arrow- 
head.with original Shaft, 
found in Switzerland. 
(Sir John Evans.) 



44 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

Japan, Burmah, Assam, Malaysia, Western Africa, and else- 
where. Many virtues have also been attributed to these 
weapons, the water in which one has been boiled having been 
used, even in recent times, as a cure for rheumatism in Corn- 
wall, whilst the discovery of a celt in Egypt bearing Gnostic 
inscriptions, shows that some mystic power was assigned to 
it by some early possessor. An ancient stone-axe has been 
known to be hung round the neck of each successive ram 
which acted as leader of the flock during many years, in 
order that the influence of the evil eye might be warded off 
from him, and through him from the flock of which he was 
the head. The Neolithic arrow-heads are as widely known 
as fairy-darts, or elf-shots, and have been used as amulets up 
to a recent date both in these islands and on the continent. 
This practice must also be of great antiquity, since a flint 
arrow-head has been found attached to an Etruscan gold 
necklace, apparently as a kind of charm. Writing in 1691, 
of the Fairies and their ways, in his " Secret Common- 
wealth," the Rev. Robert Kirk, a firm believer, by the way, 
in the tales which he narrated, gives us a good idea as 
to the views which were held at that date, and indeed we 
may say up to a much more recent period, as to the nature 
of these arrow-heads, for it is of them he speaks. "Their 
weapons," he says, "are most what solid earthly Bodies, 
nothing of Iron, but much of Stone, like to yellow soft Flint 
Spa, shaped like a barbed Arrow-head, but flung like a Dairt, 
with great ' Force. These Amies (cut by Airt and Tools 
it seems beyond humane) have something of the Nature of 
Thunderbolt subtilty, and mortally wounding the vital Parts 
without breaking the Skin ; of which Wounds I have observed 
in Beasts, and felt them with my Hands. They are not as 
infallible Benjamites, hitting at a Hair's breadth \ nor are 
they wholly unvanquishable, at least in Appearance." 

A letter of Dr. Hickes to Pepys, dated London, June 19, 
1700, is a further proof of the prevalence of the idea at this 



NEOLITHIC MAN 45 

time. "At the same time, as I remember, he (Lord 
Tarbut) entertained the Duke (of Lauderdale) with a story 
of Elf arrows, which was very surprising to me. They are 
of a triangular form, somewhat like the pile or beard of our 
old English arrows of war, almost as thin as one of our old 
groats, made of flints or pebbles, or such-like stones, and 
these the country people in Scotland believe that evil 
spirits (which they call Elves, from the old Danish word 
A/far, which signifies Daemon, Genius, Satyrus) do shoot 
into the hearts of cattle ; and, as I remember, my Lord 
Tarbut, or some other Lord, did produce one of these Elf 
arrows, which one of his tenants or neighbours took out 
of the heart of one of his cattle that died of a usual death. 
I have another strange story, but very well attested, of an 
Elf arrow that was shot at a venerable Irish Bishop by an 
Evil Spirit, in a terrible noise louder than thunder, which 
shaked the house where the Bishop was." 

Besides the use of these arrow-heads as amulets against 
the malign influence of fairies, they have been employed in 
other superstitious practices. Every reader will be familiar 
with the fact that one of the commonest devices of witch- 
craft was to construct a wax or clay image of the person 
whom it was desired to injure, and to pierce it with pins or 
other sharp instruments. It was, of course, hoped that the 
injury to the image would be followed by serious illness in 
the person which it represented. Now Mr. Gomme tells us 
that in Scotland the implement used for wounding the 
image w T as sometimes a stone arrow-head, and that its use 
was accompanied by an incantation. No doubt it was 
believed that the effect of the injury would be intensified by 
the use of a magical weapon such as the fairy dart. It is 
probable that this idea is a genuine relic of the period when 
the fabricators of these weapons lived side by side with 
other and later races, who may have regarded them with 
that superstitious reverence with which the aborigines have 



46 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

been regarded in other countries by later immigrants. This, 
however, is a question which must be dealt with more fully 
at a later point. 

Apart, however, from the arts of witchcraft, we have 
abundant evidence that flint flakes had their place in 
genuine religious ceremonies in various parts of the world. 
Thus, in the process of the embalming of the body in Egypt, 
after the line of the first incision had been marked out in 
the left groin with ink, an assistant, the slitter or para- 
schistes, taking "an Ethiopic stone " says Diodorus Siculus, 
"a knife, probably made of flint," says Mr. Budge, made 
the required opening. Circumcision amongst the Jews may 
be performed with a stone knife, and a similar implement 
is used by the Arabians in the opening of the veins which 
forms a part of the ceremony of making pledges of faith. 
The Romans preserved a sacred flint in the temple of 
Jupiter Feretrius, with which the Pater Patratus slew the 
victim, offered up to consecrate the solemn treaties of the 
Romans. " If by public counsel," he said, " or by wicked 
fraud, they swerve first ; in that day, oh Jove, smite thou 
the Roman people, as I here to-day shall smite this hog ; 
and smite them so much more as thou art abler and 
stronger." With these words he struck the hog with 
the flint stone. 

In various parts of the country, where flints were plentiful, 
there existed regular manufactories of the weapons we have 
been considering. One of the most celebrated of these was 
at the place called Grimes' Graves, near Brandon in Suffolk, 
a locality where the descendant trade of gun-flint making 
has long been carried on. Here the Neolithic workers 
sank shafts in search of flints and connected them together 
by means of galleries from three to five feet in height. The 
miners of this period had never thought of the simple 
method of using wooden props for the roofs of their 
galleries and hence they did not dare to carry on operations 



NEOLITHIC MAN 47 

very far from the shaft. Thus when they had carried their 
gallery a short way and exhausted all the flints near at 
hand, they sank a fresh shaft in a new spot and recom- 
menced operations. In some of their old workings, the 
tools of the Neolithic miners have been discovered, and 
we thus learn that they used the antlers of deer as pickaxes, 
as well as the polished stone celts described above. Chisels 
made of bone and horn have also been found, and primitive 
lamps made of cups of chalk hollowed out to contain 
grease. Canon Greenwell gives the following account of 
the exploration of one of these galleries which had obvi- 
ously fallen in during the interval between two periods of 
work. " It was seen," he writes, " that the flint had been 
worked out in three places at the end, forming three hollows 
extending beyond the chalk face of the end of the gallery. 
In front of two of these hollows were laid two picks, the 
handles of each towards the mouth of the gallery, the tines 
pointing towards each other, showing in all probability that 
they had been used respectively by a right and left handed 
man. The day's work over, the men had laid down each 
his tool, ready for the next day's work ; meanwhile the root 
had fallen in and the picks had never been recovered. 

" I learnt from the workmen that it would not have been 
safe to have excavated further in that direction, the chalk 
at that point being broken up by cracks so as to prevent the 
roof from standing firm. It was a most impressive sight, 
and one never to be forgotten, to look, after a lapse it may 
be of three thousand years, upon a piece of work unfinished, 
with the tools of the workmen still lying where they had 
been placed so many years ago. Between the picks was the 
skull of a bird, but none of the other bones. These two 
picks, as was the case with many found elsewhere, had upon 
them an incrustation of chalk, the surface of which bore the 
impression of the workmen's fingers, the print of the skin 
being most apparent. This had been caused by the chalk 



LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 



with which the workmen's hands became coated being 
transferred to the handle of the pick." 

Other relics have been found in the pit-dwellings and 
tombs, such as spindle whorls, showing that spinning was 
practised, chalk weights to stretch the warp and long combs 
to push the woof, which prove that weaving was also one 
of their occupations. They were also acquainted with the 

manufacture of pottery, though 
only by hand. Thus in their 
industries, they attained to a 
much higher level than their 
predecessors, so that it is the 
more remarkable that their 
ideas of art were so much less 
advanced. The really graceful 
delineations of animal forms 
which we find associated with 
the cave-dwellers have no place 
in this period, where instead we 
meet with spirals, concentric 
circles, rude geometrical orna- 
ments, in fact, alone or almost 
alone. In one instance, at Locmariaquer in Brittany, a figure 
of a stone axe in its wooden handle has been found inscribed 
on the under surface of the capstone of the great dolmen 
known as the Table des Marchands. This axe is repre- 
sented as decked with a plume, and it is interesting to note 
that its handle is depicted as curved back beyond the socket 
for the blade, a feature which has been observed in one of 
the very few shafted celts which have been found in this 
country. 

The burial-places of this race, so full of valuable informa- 
tion from the relics which they contain, must next be con- 
sidered. In some cases the Neolithic people buried their 
dead in caverns., but their most characteristic form of 




Fig. 12.— Spindle- Whorl. 
(Scot. Ant. Mus.) 



NEOLITHIC MAN 



49 



interment was under a Jong oval mound of earth known 
as a long barrow, which was usually erected on the top or 
side of a hill or eminence of ground. Such mounds of 
earth form striking and unmistakable objects in the land- 
scape in the parts of the country in which they occur. The 
interior of these mounds contained in some cases only a 
pile of stones in the midst of which the corpse was placed, 
but in other instances the internal structure was much more 
complicated. In chambered barrows of this kind there was 
an entrance with passages and galleries all formed, as to 




Fig. 13. — A Long Barrow, with the ring of standing stones 
restored. 



their sides and roof, of flat slabs of stone. In these galleries 
and transepts successive interments took place. In many 
instances the superjacent earth has been removed, for farm- 
ing or other purposes, with the result that the internal 
skeleton of stones has been left exposed.* In its simplest 
form this skeleton consists of a large flat stone or capstone, 
supported by others standing on their sides or ends. The 
tabular appearance of such structures has led to their re- 
ceiving the name of dolmen, or stone table {daul, a table,. 
and maen, stone, Celtic). Subsequent generations of people, 
ignorant of their real purpose, have called them by the title 
of Druidical altars, to which they have no claim. Very 

* It should be mentioned that, according to some archaeologists, 
some of these dolmens have possibly, or even probably, always been 
sub-aerial and never covered with a mound of earth. 



5o 



LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 



many of these structures exist in various parts of the 
country, and a few examples of some of the more important 




Fig. 14. — Dolmen. 




Fig. 15. — Breton Dolmen. 



or better known may now be cited. Kit's Coty House, near 
Aylesford in Kent, is a well-known instance of an English 



NEOLITHIC MAN 51 

dolmen ; and others familiar to tourists are those of Chun in 
Cornwall, the capstone of which has been estimated to weigh 
twenty tons, and the double dolmen at Plas Newydd in the 
Isle of Anglesey. The great Lanyon dolmen in Cornwall 
was uncovered about one hundred years ago by a farmer, 




^v^^^^r k ,t,s coty HouSE 



Fig. 16. — Kit's Coty House. Dolmen near Aylesford, Kent. 
(From "A Week's Tramp in Dickensland," by W. R. Hughes.) 



who supposed it to be a mere heap of earth which he 
thought might be usefully applied to farming purposes. 
By degrees, as the earth was carted away, the great stones 
began to appear, and when operations were completed and 
all the soil had been cleared away, the dolmen, much as it 
now exists, was disclosed, containing in its interior a heap 



52 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

of broken urns and human bones. The capstone is about 
eighteen and a half feet long by nine wide, and is computed 
to weigh more than fifteen tons. In 1815 it was blown off 
by a storm, but it was replaced in 1824, though it was found 
to be impossible to restore one of the upright stones to its 
position, since it had been broken in the fall. 

Weyland Smith's forge on the downs near the Icknield 
Street, and close to the White Horse of Berkshire, is another 
instance of the uncovered stones of a long barrow. It con- 
sists of a ruined chamber, of some remains of a gallery and 
of a second chamber to complete the cruciform arrange- 
ment. All these were at one time buried beneath the 
earth and surrounded by a ring of stones. This group 
of stones owes the name which it now bears to Wieland 
(Norse, Volundr), the Smith of the Teutonic mythology, and 
must have been known by that title for a long time, for in 
955 we find King Edred granting lands to the wide gap 
"west of Welandes Smithan." Again, King Alfred, who 
was born at Wantage in the immediate neighbourhood of 
the remains, says, in his translation of Boethius, " Who now 
knows the bones of the wise Weland, ungLer what barrow 
they are concealed ? " 

The legend which is attached to this group of stones, and 
which has been made use of by Sir Walter Scott in his 
novel of " Kenilworth" is that it was the habitation of an 
invisible smith, and that if a traveller's horse lost his shoe 
it would be replaced, if the horse was brought to the stones 
and left there with a piece of money. 

The long barrow at Uley in Gloucestershire was a very 
complicated structure of its kind. There was, as in other 
instances, a boundary wall laid in horizontal courses, faced 
on the outside, and carried up to a height of two or three feet. 
This surrounded the mound itself, which " is about 120 ft. in 
length, 85 ft. in its greatest breadth, and about 10 ft. in 
height. It is higher and broader at its east end than else- 



NEOLITHIC MAN 



53 



where. The entrance at the east end is a trilithon, formed 
by a large flat stone upwards of 8 ft. in length, and 4J ft. in 
depth, and supported by two upright stones which face each 
other, so as to leave a space of about 2 J ft. between the 
lower edge of the large stone and the natural ground. 
Entering this, a gallery appears, running from east to west, 
about 22 ft. in length, 4 J ft in average width, and 5 ft. in 
height ; the sides formed of large slabs of stone set edge- 
ways, the spaces between being filled in with smaller stones. 
The roof is formed, as usual, of flat slabs, laid across and 




Fig." 17. — Plan of the Chambers in the Uley Barrow. 



resting on the side slabs. There are two smaller chambers 
on one side, and there is evidence of two others having 
existed on the other side. Several skeletons were found in 
this fine tumulus when it was opened many years ago." 
(Jewitt.) 

Had this barrow been denuded of earth, the stones, many 
of which would necessarily have lost their original position, 
would have presented similar, though more extensive, 
remains to those of Weyland Smith's forge. In some cases 
the stones forming the entrance and lining the galleries are 
carved in rude patterns. Examples of this occur in the 
great barrow at New Grange in the County Meath, and at 



54 



LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 



Gavr Inis in the Morbihan, Brittany. It will be remembered 
that it is on the under surface of the capstone of such a 
dolmen at Locmariaquer that the figure of a hafted axe is 
incised. 

Again, in other cases, the barrow was surrounded by a 
ring of standing stones. Such was the case, according tc 
Dr. Thurnam's restoration, at the long barrow of West 
Kennet in Wilts, 350 ft. in length. This had a bounding 
wall of rubble with large upright blocks interspersed at 
regular intervals. The observation of Aristotle, to which 




Fig. 18. — Stone with incised concentric circles, found at Eday, 
Orkney. (Scot. Ant. Mus. ) To illustrate the type of orna- 
ment alluded to on p. 48. 

Dr. Thurnam calls attention, that the Iberians used to place 
as many obelisks around the tomb of the dead warrior as he 
had killed enemies, perhaps gives a clue to the origin of this 
custom. In certain cases where the mound and rubble wall 
have disappeared, the standing stones remain, and some of 
the so-called Druidical circles have thus been formed. 
Indeed, Mr. Arthur Evans points out that in the most 
primitive examples of such burial mounds, " it seems a 
universal rule that the stone circle surrounds a central 
dolmen or stone cist containing the remains of the dead. 
To take, for example, some of the closest known parallels 
to our great British monument* — the stone circles described 
* Stonehenge. 



NEOLITHIC MAN 55 

by travellers in Arabia and its borderlands are distinctly 
associated with central interments. Mr. Palmer in his book 
on ' The Desert of Exodus ' states that in the neighbour- 
hood of Sinai he saw huge stone circles, some of them 
measuring 100 ft. in diameter, having in the centre a cist 
covered with a heap of huge boulders. In the cists he found 
skeletons in the same contracted position — the attitude of 
sleep amongst the ' Courtmantles ' of primitive times — as 
is seen in our own early interments." Again, he points out, 
that the early barrows of the North are in fact a copy of a 
primitive kind of mound dwelling, such as is still repre- 
sented by the Gamme of the Lapp. " It is a primitive 
dwelling of the living preserved by religious usage as a 
dwelling for the dead in days when in all probability the 
living had adopted houses of somewhat improved construc- 
tion, and adapted to a less boreal climate." By studying 
these primitive dwellings, then, we can arrive at a compre- 
hension of the meaning of the different parts of the grave 
mound. In the Lapp Gamme near the North Cape " there 
are the ring-stones actually employed in propping up the 
turf-covered mound of the dwelling, and there is the low en- 
trance gallery leading to the chamber within, which, in fact, 
is the living representative, and at the same time the remote 
progenitor, of the gallery of the chambered barrow." Again, 
the entrance to such barrows is directed towards the east, 
a fact which may be explained by what we know of the 
Northern dwelling-mounds, which have their doorways 
directed towards the east also, in order that the inhabitants 
may be awakened by the first rays of the sun in a land 
where during a large part of the year the hours of daylight 
are but few. " However the afterthoughts of religion may 
have connected this usage with the worship of the sun, it is 
in its origin to be accounted for, like the stone circle and the 
gallery and avenue, by purely utilitarian reasons." After the 
construction of such mounds had long ceased, perhaps after 



56 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

their signification has been forgotten, we find the dolmens 
associated with superstitious observances, and looked upon 
with a certain veneration. In the earlier days of Christianity 
in Europe, and especially in the Teutonic regions, one of the 
great difficulties with which the Church had to contend was 
the tendency of its converts to revert to stone worship, and 
various fulminations of local synods are extant against this 
practice. For instance, we find the twentieth canon of a 
council held at Nantes, in Brittany, ordering the "stones 
which are venerated in ruinous places and in the forests," 
to be dug up and thrown away so that they may be con- 
cealed from those who were in the habit of worshipping 
them.* 

A striking instance is met with in the life of St. Boniface, 
the apostle of Friesland, who, when he commenced the con- 
version of that country in the eighth century, found that 
one of the megalithic tombs in the province of Drenthe had 
been turned into an altar for human sacrifices. Any stranger 
who fell into the hands of the wild races of the district 
was first made to creep through the opening between the 
upright stones and then "sent to Odin" on the capstone. 
The influence of the Saint was powerful enough to cause the 
cessation of the sacrifice itself, but the practice of causing a 
stranger, especially if he hailed from Brabant, to creep 
between the upright stones persisted until late in the Middle 
Ages. 

Many such mounds have been supposed to be habitations 
of the fairies in these islands and on the Continent, and the 
veneration with which they have been regarded has lingered 
to our own days, for so late as 1859 a farmer in the Isle of 
Man offered a heifer up as a propitiatory sacrifice so that 

* " Lapides quos in ruinosis locis et sylvestribus daemonum ludifi- 
cationibus decepti venerantur, ubi et vota vovent et deferunt, 
funditus effodiantur, at que in tali loco projiciantur, ubi nunquam a 
cultoribus suis inveniri possint. " 



NEOLITHIC MAN 



57 



no harm might befall him from the opening of a tumulus 
upon his land. 

The skeletons which have been found in these tombs 
show that the dead were buried in a huddled-up position, 
perhaps, Sir John Evans thinks, because it was the habit of 




Fig. 19. — Interments in a Barrow. The lower skeleton is that of 
a man who has been buried in a crouched-up position. The 
upper is a secondary interment of a later age, such as is often 
met with in barrows. 



the people of the period to sleep in that position, and not 
stretched out straight. 

As Mr. Andrew Lang puts it : 

" He buried his dead with their toes 
Tucked up, an original plan, 
Till their knees came right under their nose, 
'Twas the manner of Primitive Man." 

But in some of these barrows, and particularly in the 
south-western part of England, the bodies seem to have 
been deposited in a sitting posture with their backs resting 
against the walls of the tomb. In the eastern chamber of 
the barrow at Charlton Abbots, there were twelve skeletons 
which must have been originally placed squatting on flat 



58 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

stones round the walls. At West Kennet, in Wilts, six 
skeletons, whose original position must have been the same, 
were discovered, and similar facts have been noted at 
Avening and Uley in Gloucestershire. 

Very great interest attaches to the objects which are 
found in great abundance interred with the dead. The 
cleft skulls of some of the skeletons met with in many 
instances by Dr. Thurnam, led him to believe that human 
sacrifices took place at the funeral ceremony, as is the case 
with other savage races. The bones of domestic animals 
found in the same places were also probably the remains 
of less cruel sacrifices. It is very likely that slaves and 
animals were slain in order that their spirits might accom- 
pany that of the dead man in his last journey, as the 
warrior's horse was slain by the Scythians and by North 
American Indians, so that it might serve its master in the 
other world. In some cases the skull of a dog has been 
met with, as at Knock Maraidhe. near Dublin, the idea 
probably being the same. The Greenland missionary, 
Cranz, says that it is the custom of the people of that 
region to place the head of a dog in the tomb of a child, 
" in order that the soul of the dog, which can always find 
its way home, may show the helpless infant the way to the 
country of souls." Nilsson quotes this statement as 
illustrative of the fact that the skulls of dogs have been 
found in the burying-places of the Stone age in Sweden. 
But beyond these relics of sacrifices, weapons, such as celts 
and arrow-heads, pottery and other implements, sometimes 
in a perfect condition and sometimes broken, and with 
every evidence of having been purposely broken, have also 
been discovered in great quantities. There can be no 
doubt from what we know of the practices of savage races, 
that these implements were placed in the grave that they 
might be of service to the departed in the land of souls, 
and the custom testifies to the fact that the people of the 



NEOLITHIC MAN 59 

Neolithic period had a belief in a future existence. The 
fact that some of the implements had been broken is an 
additional proof of this, for we know that this is done by 
other races with the idea that the spirit of the broken 
weapon will be utilisable by the spirit of its dead master. 



Fig. 20.— Skull trephined during Life and after Death. From 
one of the Dolmens called Cibournios or Tombs of the 
Poulacres. AB, Healed edge of the surgical trephining; 
BC, AD, edges whence pieces had been cut off after death. 
( Prunieres. ) 



A further light is thrown upon this question by the dis- 
covery in France of skulls upon which the operation of 
trepanning, or removing a portion of bone from the 
cranium, had been performed. The operation was per- 
formed at this period of course with a flint implement, and 
sometimes took place in children or young adults, some- 



6o LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

times in the dead. The object probably was to open a door 
for the escape of the demons who may have been supposed to 
have been the cause of epilepsy or other nervous troubles. 
If a patient survived so critical an operation, and there is 
abundant evidence in the condition of the bone that some- 
times patients did survive for many years, it is not wonderful 
that he or she should have been looked upon as an indivi- 
dual particularly beloved by the gods, and that after his 
death pieces of his skull should have been treasured as 
precious amulets. Such amulets have, in fact, been found 
in French dolmens, with grooves or holes for the attach- 
ment of a cord, and each preserves on one of its borders a 
part of the cicatrised edge of the original opening as 
evidence of its genuineness. The most valuable of these 
amulets, curiously enough, have been met in the interior of 
the skulls of persons who had suffered posthumous trepan- 
ning. The amulets had evidently been purposely inserted 
in the position which they occupied, and the significance 
of this fact is thus explained by M. Broca, the distinguished 
French anthropologist: "Were they a symbol, a repre- 
sentation of the great portion of the skull removed by 
trepanning? It is hardly likely, since any fragment of a 
skull might have been employed for this purpose ; and the 
precious amulet would not have been so lightly sacrificed. 
The intra-cranial amulet meant much more than that. It was 
a viaticum, a talisman which the deceased carried away with 
him into another life to bring him luck, and to protect him 
from the influence of the evil spirits who had tormented his 
childhood. But, even if we admit the first hypothesis, it 
none the less indicates the belief that a new life awaited the 
dead ; for otherwise there would have been no motive 
whatever for the ceremony of restitution. The study of 
prehistoric trepanning and the attendant ceremonies prove, 
therefore, incontrovertibly, that the men of the Neolithic 
age believed in a future life, in which the dead retained 



NEOLITHIC MAN 61 

their individuality. It is, I think, the earliest epoch to 
which we can attribute this belief." 

Beyond these facts connected with the religious opinions 
of the Neolithic people, certain female figures of the rudest 
art, decked with necklaces, and in one case ornamented 
with the figure of a stone axe, have been discovered carved 
on the walls of artificial grottos of this period in France by 
the Baron de Baye. These figures, which somewhat re- 
semble the representations of the goddess Minerva on the 
clay vases found in ancient Troy, have been thought to be 
the tutelary deities of the inhabitants of the grottoes. 

At a later date their religion appears to have been 
Druidism, of which, though the name is so familiar, we 
cannot be said to know a great deal. The first idea which 
rises to the mind when the name of Druid is mentioned is that 
of a venerable old man in a white robe cutting down mistletoe 
with a golden sickle. From the various facts which we know 
about the Druids, they must really have closely resembled 
the angekoks of the Eskimo or the medicine-men of the 
North American Indians. Strabo (born c. 64 B.C.) described 
those whom he saw as walking in scarlet and gold brocade 
and wearing gold collars and bracelets, whilst in a mediaeval 
Irish account the chief Druid of Tara, " is shown to us as a 
leaping juggler with ear-clasps of gold and a speckled cloak 
'he tosses swords and balls in the air,' and like the buzzing 
of bees on a beautiful day is the motion of each passing 
the other." (Elton.) They practised human sacrifice and 
augury from the viscera, whilst at some seasons of the year 
human victims were "crucified or shot to death with 
arrows ; elsewhere they would be stuffed into huge figures 
of wickerwork, or a heap of hay would be laid out in the 
human shape, where men, cattle, and wild beasts were 
burned in a general holocaust." (Elton.) 

In Julius Caesar's time, and later, they taught the doctrine 
of the transmigration of souls. " One would have laughed," 



62 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

says Valerius Maximus, a writer of the first century, " at 
these long-trousered philosophers, if we had not found their 
doctrines under the cloak of Pythagoras." 

The Romans seem to have had a certain respect for the 
Druids of the later period when they occupied the country, 
for Lucan, addressing the Romano-Britons, says : "Ye too, 
ye bards, who by your praises perpetuate the memory of the 
fallen brave, without hindrance poured forth your strains. 
And ye, ye Druids, now that the sword was removed, began 
once more your barbaric rites and weird solemnities. To you 
only is given knowledge or ignorance (whichever it be) of the 
gods and the powers of heaven ; your dwelling is in the lone 
heart of the forest. From you we learn that the bourne of 
man's ghost is not the senseless grave, not the pale realm of 
the monarch below; in another world his spirit survives still; 
death, if your lore is true, is but the passage to eternal life." 

The religious writings of Ireland afford many allusions 
to the Druids, St. Patrick's Hymn containing a prayer 
against " black laws of the heathen and against the spells of 
women, smiths and Druids," whilst St. Columba exclaims, 
in a striking metaphor, " The Son of God is my Druid ! " 
The magic of the Druids has also made a great impression 
upon the folk-stories of the same country, mention of the 
Druidical rod as an implement of wizardy and of the 
spells of the Druids being frequent. This has survived to 
the present day. Thus in the story of "The Champion of 
the Red Branch," as one example from many which might 
be quoted, we find such expressions as " I lay on thee the 
spells of the art of the Druid, to be feeble in strength as a 
woman in travail, in the place of the camp or of the battle 
if you go not out to meet the three hundred cats." 

Of the doctrine of metempsychosis, mentioned above, 
it is possible that some relics may still linger in the folk-lore 
of the country. In Yorkshire the country people call the 
night-flying white moths "souls," and in parts of Ireland 



NEOLITHIC MAN 63 

butterflies are said to be the souls of your grandfather. Mr. 
Gomme mentions some further examples, one relating to an 
instance in London where a sparrow was supposed to be the 
soul of a dead person. In the county Mayo it is believed 
that the souls of virgins, remarkable for the purity of their 
lives, took after their death the forms of swans, perhaps a 
reminiscence of the Children of Lir. In Devonshire there 
is the case of the Oxenham family, whose souls at death are 
supposed to enter into a bird : while in Cornwall it is 
believed that King Arthur is still living as a raven. In 
Nidderdale the country people say that the souls of 
unbaptized infants are embodied in the nightjar. The 
most conspicuous example of souls assuming the form of 
animals is that of the Cornish fisher-folk, who believe that 
they can sometimes see their drowning comrades take that 
shape. In the Hebrides when a man is slowly lingering 
away in consumption the fairies are said to be on the watch 
to steal his soul, that they may therewith give life to some 
other body. In Lancashire some one received into his 
mouth the last breath of a dying person, fancying that the 
soul passed out with it into his own body. These examples, 
Mr. Gomme thinks, represent the last link in the genealogy 
of the doctrine of metempsychosis, as it has survived 
in folk-lore. Poetry may have kept alive the idea of the 
butterfly or moth embodied in the soul, but it did not create 
the idea, because it is shown to extend to other creatures 
not so adaptable to poetic fancy. When we come upon the 
Lincolnshire belief that the soul of a sleeping comrade had 
temporarily taken up his abode in a bee, we are too near the 
doctrine of savages for there to be any doubt as to where 
the first links of the genealogy start from. There is scarcely 
any need to draw attention to its non-Christian character, 
except that folk-lore has preserved in the Nidderdale 
example evidence of the arresting hand which Christianity 
put upon these beliefs. 



64 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

The tongue of the people of the period with which we are 
dealing was not long extinct in Ireland in the ninth century, 
when in the famous old Irish glossary ascribed to Cormac, 
King and Bishop of Cashel (slain 915), it is called the Iarn 
or iron tongue. Professor Rhys mentions that Cormac 
" records two of the Ivernian words known to him, 
namely fern, anything good, and ond, a stone. But 
these, together with Net, Corb, Ri and others in his work 
which may be suspected of being Ivernian, have hitherto 
thrown no light upon the origin of the language ; but should 
it turn out that those who without hesitation call our 
Ivernians Iberians, and bring them into relationship with 
the Basque-speaking people of France and Spain, are right 
in doing so, one could not at all wonder that Cormac 
considered the Ivernian a dark speech. In the North of 
Ireland that idiom may have been extinct in the time of 
Adamnan ; and Columba in the sixth century cannot have 
known it, which, nevertheless, does not prove that there 
were no peasants who spoke it there in his time. How- 
ever that may be, Adamnan mentions a name into which 
ond, a stone, possibly enters ; to wit, that of Ondemone, 
a place where the Irish Picts were beaten by the Ultonians 
in the year 563 ; it seems to have been near the Bann, 
between Lough Neagh and the mouth of that river." It 
is possible that the earliest known title of this country, 
Albion, may belong to this tongue. This title is found 
in the story of the labours of Hercules, who, after he had 
secured the cows of Geryon, came from Spain to Liguria, 
where he was attacked by two giants, whom he killed 
before proceeding to Italy. According to the first-century 
geographer, Pomponius Mela, these giants were Albiona 
and Bergyon — i.e., Albion and Iberion, or England and 
Ireland, the position of the two islands in the sea being 
symbolised in the story by its making them the sons of 
Neptune. 



NEOLITHIC MAN 65 

There is no lack of osteological remains of the Neolithic 
people from which to form an opinion of their physical 
characteristics. These remains occur with the greatest fre- 
quency in the south-west district and particularly in Wilts and 
Gloucestershire, occupied by the Dobuni or Silures at the 
commencement of history. Dr. Garson, who has examined 
many of their skeletons, says that their skulls were large 
and well-formed, being long and proportionately narrow and 
of an oval shape — that is, they were dolichocephalic. The 
ridges over the orbits and the central part of the forehead, 
both so prominent in the skulls of the earlier race, were 
moderately or even feebly developed. Their foreheads were 
well formed, narrow and curved gracefully to the occiput, 
which was full and rounded. There was no tendency to 
prognathism or forward projection of the lower part of the 
face, such as is seen in negroes. The jaws were small and 
fine, and the whole facial expression must have been mild. 
The age of the persons to whom they belong averages, 
according to Thurnam, forty-five years, which looks as if the 
duration of life was not very long at that period. Their 
stature was short, averaging, according to Dr. Thurnam, 
5 feet 6| inches, though Dr. Garson thinks that this 
average was too high. Their bones were slender, often with 
a well-marked ridge on the back of the thigh-bone and a 
flattened shin-bone, which would show that the Neolithic 
people led an active life, probably as hunters. Tacitus, in 
speaking of the characters of the inhabitants of Britain, says 
of the Silures, whom we may take to represent the Neolithic 
folk : " The high complexion of the Silures, their usually 
curly hair, and the fact that Spain is the opposite shore to 
them, are evidences that Iberians at some earlier time crossed 
over and occupied these parts." 

This account of the Neolithic people may fitly be con- 
cluded by quoting the admirable picture which Professor 
Boyd Dawkins, putting together facts, many of which have 

E 



66 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

been elucidated by himself, has drawn of the civilisation of 
the period : 

" If we could in imagination take our stand on the summit 
of a hill commanding an extensive view, in almost any part 
of Great Britain or Ireland in the Neolithic period, we 
should look upon a landscape somewhat of this kind. Thin 
lines of smoke rising from among the trees of the dense 
virgin forest at our feet would mark the position of the 
Neolithic homesteads, and of the neighbouring stockaded 
camp which afforded refuge in time of need ; while here 
and there a gleam of gold would show the small patch of 
ripening wheat. 

" We enter a track in the forest, and thread our way to 
one of the clusters of homesteads, passing herds of goats 
and flocks of horned sheep, or disturbing a troop of horses 
or small short-horned oxen, or stumbling upon a swineherd 
tending the hogs in their search after roots. We should 
probably have to defend ourselves against the attack of 
some of the large dogs, used as guardians of the flock against 
bears, wolves and foxes, and for hunting the wild animals. 
At last, on emerging into the clearing, we should see a little 
plot of flax or small-eared wheat, and near the homestead 
the inhabitants, some clad in linen and others in skins, and 
ornamented with necklaces and pendants of stone, bone or 
pottery, carrying on their daily occupations. Some are 
cutting wood with stone axes with a wonderfully sharp edge, 
fixed in wooden handles, with stone adzes or gouges, or with 
little saws, composed of carefully notched pieces of flint 
about three or four inches long, splitting it with stone wedges, 
scraping it with flint flakes. Some are at work preparing 
handles for the spears, shafts for the arrows, and wood for 
the bows, or for the broad paddles used for propelling the 
canoes. Others are busy grinding and sharpening the 
various stone tools, scraping skins with implements ground 
to a circular edge, or carving various implements out of 



NEOLITHIC MAN 67 

bone and antler with sharp splinters of flint, while the 
women are preparing the meal with pestles and mortars and 
grain rubbers and cooking it on the fire, generally outside 
the house, or spinning thread with spindle or distaff, or 
weaving it with a rude loom. We might also have seen 
them at work at the moulding of rude cups and vessels out 
of clay which had been carefully prepared. The Neolithic 
farmers used for food the produce of their flocks and herds, 
and they appear to have eaten all their domestic animals, 
including the horse and the dog ; the latter animal, however, 
probably only under the pressure of famine. 

" They also had abundance of game out of the forest, but 
it was probably rather an occasional supply, and did not 
furnish them with their main subsistence. The roe and the 
stag, probably also the elk and the reindeer, and in Ireland, 
the Irish elk, provided them with venison; and the dis- 
covery of the urus in a refuse-heap at Cissbury, proves that 
the wild ox was still living in the forests, and was some- 
times a victim to the Neolithic hunter. They also ate 
hares, wild boars and beavers." 



CHAPTER IV 
THE BRONZE PERIOD 

The Aryan Race — Goidels and Brythons— Early Accounts 
of Britain— Lake Dwellings— Crannogs— The Glastonbury 
Lake Village— Pile Dwellings— Bronze Celts— Swords- 
Personal Ornaments — Casting of Bronze— Pottery — Cloth- 
ing. 

The Celtic immigrants, whether belonging to the earlier 
Goidelic, or to the later Brythonic wing, were members 
of the Aryan race, a race which had attained to a consider- 
able pitch of civilisation before the arrival of either division 
on these shores. From an examination of the words which 
seem to have belonged to the original tongue, we learn that 
the undivided Aryan race reckoned its year by months 
determined by the phases of the moon, which they styled 
the measurer, that they had domesticated animals, could 
count up to one hundred, and had a religion, a large part 
of which was a profound reverence for the hearth as the 
altar and shrine of ancestral deities. Traces of this reverence 
are to be met with even in these days, especially in Scotland 
and Ireland, where to " trample the cinders " is one of the 
worst insults which can be offered to a household. It is in 
the customs connected with the initiation of the new-born 
child into the family circle, however, that perhaps the most 
striking relics of this reverence have been found in recent 
times. Pennant narrates that in the Highlands of Scotland 
he saw at christening-feasts the father place a basket of 
food across the fire and hand the child three times over the 



THE BRONZE PERIOD 69 

food and the flames. Another striking custom, also met 
with in the Highlands of Scotland, and described by Light- 
foot, is when, after the birth of the child, the nurse takes a 
green stick of ash, one end of which she puts in the fire, 
and while it is burning receives in a spoon the sap that oozes 
from the other, which she administers to the child as its 
first food. "Some thousands of years ago," says Kelly * in 
his " Indo-European Folk-lore," commenting upon this 
custom, " the ancestors of this Highland nurse had known 
the fraxinus ornus in Arya, and now their descendant, 
imitating their practice in the cold North, but totally ignorant 
of its true meaning, puts the nauseous sap of her native ash 
into the mouth of her hapless charge." It was perhaps on 
account of their reverence for the hearth that they regarded 
the eating of uncooked meat with such scorn that the term 
eaters of uncooked meat, or some similar phrase, is applied 
in many of the derivative languages to barbarous men. 

But perhaps the most important piece of knowledge which 
they brought with them to this country was that of the 
working of metal in the shape of bronze, the period, at least 
the earlier part of it to which they belonged, having from 
that circumstance received the name of the Bronze Age. 

As has already been mentioned, the Celtic peoples 
came over to this country in two bands, separated from 
one another by several centuries. The Goidels, who 
were the first to arrive, to a greater or lesser extent 
amalgamated with the Ivernians, whom they found in 
possession, and seem to have in part at least assimilated 
their Druidism, a question which will have to be more 
fully dealt with on a future page. As to the Brythons, 
Professor Rhys remarks that : " The name Brittones is that 
which all the Celts who have spoken a Brythonic tongue in 
later times own in common ; among the Kymry it becomes 

* In reference to this passage, it must be remembered that Kelly 
fully held the Central- Asian view of the Aryan origin. 



7 o LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

Brython, which is one of the names they still give them- 
selves, and from which they derive the word Brythoneg, one 
of their names for the Welsh language. This, in old Cornish, 
was Brethonec, and meant the Brythonic dialect of Wales 
and Cornwall, after the Goidelic had been chased away. In 
Breton the word assumes the form Brezonek, and means the 
Brythonic tongue spoken in lesser Britain or Brittany. So," 
he continues, " when one wants to speak collectively of this 
linguistic group of Celts from the Clyde to the neighbour- 
hood of the Loire, confusion is best avoided by calling them 
by some such names as Brythons and Brythonic, leaving the 
words Britain, British and Britannic for other uses, including 
amongst them the exigencies of the Englishman who, in his 
more playful moods, condescends to call himself a Briton." 
The name Brythonic, which the race appears to have 
adopted before reaching this island, means a cloth-clad 
people, in contradistinction to a people dressed in skins, 
some continental tribe being doubtless indicated who used 
the hides of beasts for their clothing. When these immi- 
grants reached this country, it cannot have been a very 
attractive spot for occupation, covered as it was with vast 
forests and marshes, overhung with constant fogs and 
deluged with frequent rains. During their occupancy, in 
the fourth century before Christ, we have indeed direct 
evidence of the condition of the country, for at that period 
an energetic syndicate of merchants of Massilia, the modern 
Marseilles, being anxious to extend their trading relations, 
fitted out an expedition, which they placed in charge of a 
learned Greek mathematician, Pytheas by name, a contem- 
porary of Aristotle and Alexander the Great. He twice 
visited these shores, and from his observations we learn that 
he was struck by the contrast which the climate of Britain 
presented when compared with that of the South of Europe, 
whence he came. "The natives," he says, "collect the 
sheaves in great barns, and thrash out the corn there, be- 



THE BRONZE PERIOD 71 

cause they have so little sunshine that our open thrashing- 
places would be of little use in that land of clouds and 
rain." He also tells us that the inhabitants made a drink 
" by mixing wheat and honey," in which statement he 
doubtless alludes to mead or metheglin, a compound still 
prepared in some parts of the country. It is probable that 
he was also the first to mention the British beer, which was 
known to the Greek physicians by a Celtic term, curmi, now 
cuir??i in Irish and cwrw in Welsh, a drink against which 
they warned their patients as one " producing pain in the 
head and injury to the nerves." But the authority for this 
statement may have been another Greek explorer, Posi- 
donius, who had been a fellow student with Cicero at 
Rhodes, and who visited this country two centuries later 
than Pytheas. At any rate, he is supposed to have been 
the person from whom Diodorus Siculus learnt that the 
inhabitants of Britain lived in mean dwellings, made for the 
most part of reeds and wood, and that their harvests con- 
sisted in cutting off the ears of corn and storing them in 
underground pits, from which they fetched each day those 
which had been longest in store to be prepared for food. 

In speaking of the mean dwellings of wood or reeds, he 
was probably alluding to the huts of wattle and daub which 
have been found in considerable numbers in the lake 
dwellings of the period. 

Lake dwellings are of two kinds, the crannog and the 
pile building, and it will now be necessary to say something 
about either variety. But first it may be remarked that, 
though different in construction, the idea was the same in 
each case, namely, to construct a habitation surrounded by 
water, which might serve as an effectual barrier against the 
depredations of wild beasts or of human enemies. The 
same idea precisely led the military architects of a later date 
to construct moats around their mounds or castles, only in 
the latter case the lake was constructed around the island, 



72 



LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 



whilst in the former the artificial island was formed in the 
pre-existent lake. The Irish crannog seems to have been 
inhabited to what may be called a recent period, for in 1567 




P 3 



in oj 



we find that " one Thomas Phettiplace, in his answer to an 
inquiry from the Government as to what castles or forts 
O'Neil hath, and of what strength they be, states : ' For castles, 



THE BRONZE PERIOD 73 

I think it be not unknown to your honours, he trusteth no 
point thereunto for his safety, as appeareth by the raising of 
the strongest castles of all his countreys, and that fortification 
which he only dependeth upon is in sartin ffreshwater loghes 
in his country, which from the sea there come neither ship 
nor boat to approach them ; it is thought that there in the 
said fortified islands lyeth all his plate, which is much, and 
money, prisoners and gages ; which islands hath in wars 
to fore been attempted, and now of late again by the Lord 
Deputy there, Sir Harry Sidney, which, for want of means 
for safe conducts upon the water, it hath not prevailed.' " 

And again in 1603, it is stated in the " Annals of the Four 
Masters," that Hugh Boy O'Donnell, having been wounded, 
" was sent to crannog-na-n-Duini, in Ross Guill, in the 
Tuathas. to be healed." 

In Scotland also they were inhabited to a late date, for 
in some instructions to "Andro bischop of the Yllis " and 
others in 1608 we read : "That the haill houssis of defence 
strongholdis and cranokis in the Yllis perteining to thame 
and their foirsaidis sal be delyverit to his Maiestie and sic as 
his Heynes sail appoint to ressave the same to be vsit at 
his Maiesty's pleasour.' Another crannog in the loch of 
Forfar, partly natural and partly artificial, bears the name 
of St. Margaret, che queen of Malcolm Canmore, who died 
in 1097. A record of 1508 states that the artificial barrier 
of the isle had been repaired in that year. 

It will be well to learn something about the structure of 
the crannogs of the countries mentioned above before 
turning our attention to an English example, and for this 
purpose the accounts of some of those who have made these 
structures a subject of special investigation, may be quoted. 
Sir William Wilde, writing about Irish crannogs, says, " that 
they were not, strictly speaking, artificial islands, but cluans, 
small islets, or shallows of clay or marl, in those lakes 
which were probably dry in summer time, but submerged 



74 



LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 



in winter. These were enlarged and fortified by piles of 
oaken timber, and in some cases by stonework. A few 
were approached by moles or causeways, but, generally 
speaking, they were completely insulated and only ac- 
cessible by boat; and it is notable that in almost every 
instance an ancient canoe was discovered in connection 
with the crannoge. Being thus insulated they afforded 
secure places of retreat from the attacks of enemies, or 
were the fastnesses of predatory chiefs or robbers, to which 
might be conveyed the booty of a marauding excursion, or 
the product of a cattle raid." On the same subject, Mr. 
Wakeman, a well-known Irish archaeologist, writes : " The 




Fig. 22. — Section of Crannog in Ardakillen Lough, Co. Roscom- 
mon (Ireland). (From Wood-Martin's "Pagan Ireland. ") 

Irish crannog, great or small, was simply an island, either 
altogether or in part artificial, strongly staked with piles of 
oak, pine, yew, alder, or other timber, encompassed by 
rows of palisading (the bases of which now usually remain), 
behind which the occupiers of the hold might defend them- 
selves with advantage against assailants. Within the 
enclosure were usually one or more log-houses which no 
doubt afforded shelter to the dwellers during the night- 
time, or whenever the state of the weather necessitated a 
retreat under cover." In Scotland their structure was 
similar to that just described, and the method of their erec- 
tion has been studied in that country by Dr. Munro, who 
points out that it was a task of no small difficulty to 



THE BRONZE PERIOD 



75 



construct, in perhaps ten feet of water, with very likely a 
treacherous bottom beneath it, a firm compact artificial 
island, possibly with a circular area of as much as ioo feet. 




Fig. 23.— A completely drained Lake-Bed at Cloneygonnell, 
Co. Cavan (Ireland), with site of Crannog in foreground. 
(From Wood-Martin's " Pagan Ireland.") 






DOG -'PLATEAU 



R A I L W A Y 







Fig. 24.— General Plan of the Lake-Bed shown in Fig. 23, with 
sites of plateaux. (From the same book.) 



76 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

He believes that the work was thus carried out : (i) Im- 
mediately over the chosen site a circular raft of trunks of 
trees, laid above branches and brushwood, was formed, 
and above it additional layers of logs, together with stones, 
gravel, &c, were heaped up till the whole mass grounded. 
(2) As this process went on, upright piles, made of oak, 
and of the required length, were inserted into prepared 
holes in the structure, and probably also a few were 
inserted into the bed of the lake. (3) The rough logs 
forming the horizontal layers were made of various kinds of 
wood, generally birch, it being the most abundant. These 
were occasionally pinned together by thick oak pegs, and 
here and there at various levels oak beams mortised into 
one another stretched across the substance of the island, 
and joined the surrounding piles. (4) When a sufficient 
height above the water line was attained, a prepared 
pavement of oak beams was constructed, and mortised 
beams were laid over the tops of the encircling piles 
which bound them firmly together as already described. 
The margin of the island was also slantingly shaped by 
an intricate arrangement of beams and stones, constituting 
in some cases a well-formed breakwater. (5) When the 
skeleton of the island was thus finished, probably turf would 
be laid over its margin where the pointed piles protruded, and 
a superficial barrier of hurdles, or some such fence, erected 
close to the edge of the water. (6) Frequently a wooden 
gangway, probably submerged, stretched to the shore, by 
means of which secret access to the crannog could be 
obtained without the use of a canoe. The crannogs dis- 
covered up to now in England are much fewer in number 
than those of the other parts of the kingdom, but whether 
for size or for importance of the discoveries made therein, 
none of them surpasses the lake-village near Glastonbury, 
which has been for some years undergoing investigation 
under the supervision of Mr. Bulleid. Although the finds 



THE BRONZE PERIOD 77 

in this village point to its having been inhabited during the 
Roman occupation, in its character it belongs strictly to 
the period with which we are now concerned. This village 
was constructed on the edge of a mere now converted into 
a peat moor, but when in occupation would have been pro- 
tected from attack by the sheet of water which lay between 
it and Glastonbury, which is one mile distant. It consisted 
of a cluster of round huts which were erected upon artificial 
platforms of clay and timber and surrounded by a stockade. 
Each hut was from 12 to 14 feet in diameter, and was con- 
structed of what is known as wattle and daub, that is to say, 
a kind of wicker-work, smeared over with clay, and each 
had a wooden door about 3 feet high. In the centre of 
each floor was a stone hearth for a fire, and outside each 
door a few slabs of lias formed a rough platform in front of 
the wooden threshold. The stockade around the village 
was composed of a palisading of piles from 3 to 9 inches in 
diameter, and from 9 to n feet high, which were kept 
together by a kind of rough hurdle-work. Canoes of oak 
have been discovered by which the inhabitants gained access 
to the mainland. It may be well to anticipate to some 
extent what will hereafter be said of the implements of the 
Bronze period, and to give some account of what has been 
found in this village, it being premised that whilst it 
belonged to the people of the Bronze age, it belonged to 
them at a time when, through the Roman influence, they 
had learnt the use of iron and perhaps of other things not 
known during what was strictly the Bronze age. Various 
implements of iron, both civil and military, have been found, 
and the presence of some of these in an unfinished condi- 
tion, as well as of lumps of scoriae, show that the forges 
existed in the village itself. Glass slag has also been found, 
which seems to show that the inhabitants manufactured the 
beads of that material met with amongst their remains. 
They worked in bronze, and a fine bowl, fibulae, pins, and 



78 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

other articles testify to their skill in this direction. They 
smelted lead ore, doubtless obtained from the neighbouring 
Mendips, and made from it spindle-whorls and weights for 
their fishing-nets. They made pottery partly by the aid of 
the wheel and partly — in a ruder manner— by hand, and 
decorated it with designs of various kinds. They spun flax 
and used the loom for weaving. Perhaps that which 
excites the greatest admiration is the remarkable skill which 
they showed in carpentry, beams well squared and holed, 
wheels, ladders, doors, buckets, dishes and bowls, many 
of them adorned with incised patterns of a flamboyant 
character, remaining as evidences of their capabilities in 
this direction. Besides ornamenting their persons with 
beads, rings and pins, they seem to have painted themselves 
with red ochre and charcoal mixed with grease. Some of 
the human remains which have been found outside the 
stockade are cut and broken, and some of the skulls, 
including one of a woman, have been cut off the body and 
stuck upon the head of a spear, to be placed probably on 
the stockade, just as the heads of criminals were, up to a 
recent date, stuck upon the gates of cities or over bridges. 
The inhabitants of the village cultivated wheat on the main- 
land adjacent, and had flocks and herds ; they were also pro- 
vided with large dogs. They killed for their food the red 
deer and the roe, the beaver and the otter, as well as wild 
geese, swans, ducks and pelicans. Such was the nature of 
a British lake-settlement, and such the mode of life of its 
inhabitants in the third and fourth centuries after Christ. 
The other form of lake-village, which has been met with 
especially in the Swiss lakes, was built in a totally different 
manner. Long piles were driven into the bed of the lake, 
and when a sufficient number of these were in position a 
platform was constructed upon them, on which were even- 
tually raised the huts in which the inhabitants dwelt. The 
jest which Erasmus made in reference to the citizens of 



THE BRONZE PERIOD 79 

Amsterdam, that he knew a city where people lived on the 
tops of trees, might well have been applied to the inhabi- 
tants of these villages. Such settlements still exist in some 
parts of the world, and the description which Herodotus 
gave of one belonging, in his day, to the Pseonians, not 
merely shows what such constructions were like, but affords 
a clue as to the manner in which they were built and 
extended to meet the growing needs of the community. 
" Their dwellings," he says, " are contrived after this man- 
ner : planks fitted on lofty piles are placed in the middle of 
the lake, with a narrow entrance from the mainland by a 
single bridge. These piles, that support the planks, all the 
citizens anciently placed there at the public charge \ but 
afterwards they established a law to the following effect : 
whenever a man marries, for each wife he sinks three piles, 
bringing wood from a mountain called Orbelus ; but every 
man has several wives. They live in the following manner : 
every man has a hut on the planks, in which he dwells, with 
a trap-door closely fitted in the planks, and leading down to 
the lake. They tie the young children with a cord round 
the foot, fearing lest they should fall into the lake beneath. 
To their horses and beasts of burden they give fish for 
fodder, of which there is such abundance, that when a man 
has opened his trap-door, he lets down an empty basket by 
a cord into the lake, and, after waiting a short time, draws 
it up full of fish." 

This description of the dwelling-places particularly asso- 
ciated with the people of the Bronze period has necessitated 
some digression into the life at another and later date, and 
in other countries, but we must now return to the time 
before the Celtic inhabitants of the country had been 
affected by Roman influence and see what light the remains 
in our possession throw upon the state of civilisation of that 
period. The most characteristic weapons and other imple- 
ments of this age are composed of the metal bronze, for 



80 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

although it is possible that there may have been a time 
when copper was used in a pure state, such period must 
have been of short duration, for the lesson was soon learnt 
that the addition of a small quantity of tin produced a 
more serviceable and harder material for the purposes for 
which it was required. It must not, however, be supposed 
that the manufacture of stone weapons came to a sudden 
and complete end with the introduction of bronze. On the 
contrary, we know, as an historical fact, that the English 
forces, at the battle of Senlac, used stone mauls as well as 
other weapons. Again, the extreme rarity of arrow-heads 
made of bronze leads us to conclude that stone was still 
used for this purpose, even during the Bronze period, and 
this perhaps because that metal was too precious to be sub- 
jected to the risk of loss which must necessarily attach to 
such a weapon as an arrow-head. 

Just as each of the Stone periods had its characteristic 
axe or celt, so also has the Bronze age, though the weapon 
varies more in its shape on account of the greater possibili- 
ties opened up to the craftsman by the nature of the 
material in which he worked, a material which was cast 
and not hewn. But in its essential features, and this 
particularly in the case of those celts which are supposed to 
be the earliest in date, it was very similar in shape to the 
stone celt of the polished period. Such early implements 
form the first class, and are called flat celts, and some of 
these are ornamented on their faces with patterns such as 
lines, chevrons and herring bones produced by punches or 
gravers. A similar form of ornamentation is found in some 
instances on the second variety, or flanged celts, the edges of 
which have projecting ledges, either because they have been 
so cast originally, or because, after having been cast flat, the 
edges have been hammered up so as to form flanges. The 
third type, or winged celt, is in its simplest form an ex 
aggeration of the flanged variety, the flanges being shorter, 



THE BRONZE PERIOD 




a 



Fig. 25. — Flat Bronze Celt found in a Barrow at Butterwick, 
Yorks, with side view and section. (Sir John Evans.) 




Fig. 26.— Flanged Bronze Celt found in Dorsetshire. (Sir John 
Evans.) The sides are decorated with a fluted chevron 
pattern, and the faces with indented herring-bone and chevron 
patterns. 



82 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

but much deeper. Sometimes there is a transverse stop- 
ridge across the blade to prevent its slipping too deeply into 
its haft, and sometimes, to assist towards the same end, that 
part of the blade which is between the flanges and below 
the stop-ridge is thinner than the rest. Thus a kind of 
groove is formed on each side into which the handle fitted. 
In some cases the edges of the flanges were hammered over 
so as to form a kind of socket, like that often used at the 
present day for iron implements, such as rakes and hoes. 




p IG> 27.— Looped Palstave found at Brassington, Derbyshire. 
(Sir John Evans. ) 



This variety led up to the last and most perfect form of 
socketed celts, in which, as Sir John Evans puts it, the 
haft was embedded in the blade, instead of, as in the other 
cases, the blade being embedded in the haft. This form 
marks an advance in casting, as a more perfect mould must 
have been employed, with a core for the socket and 
special arrangements for the ring or loop, which was often 
placed at the side of the blade, so that the head might be 
more securely fastened to the haft. In this variety orna- 
mentation in the shape of reedings, pellets, circles and 



THE BRONZE PERIOD 



83 



other devices is sometimes met with, the patterns beiug 
raised and produced in the casting and not by the subse- 
quent use of tools. As to the handling of these celts, the 




Fig. 28. — Socketed and Ringed Celt with raised ornament, found 
at Kingston, Surrey. (Sir John Evans.) 



simpler forms may have been attached to their hafts much 
as the stone celts were to theirs, but the others would 
require a crooked helve if they were to be used as axes. 
One such celt with its handle was found in Ireland, in 
which the helve consisted of a branch with a second 



84 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

portion sticking out from it nearly at right angles, to which 
the head was attached. Other implements of the same 




:/ f5'" : 



metal which have come down to us are chisels, gouges, 
hammers, punches, awls, tongs, socketed and tanged 
knives, daggers, razors and sickles. Special mention must 



THE BRONZE PERIOD 85 

be made of two classes of weapons, swords and lance- 
heads. The former are leaf-shaped and their "total 
length is generally about 24 inches, though sometimes 
not more than 16 inches, but they are occasionally as long 
as 30 inches, or even more. The blades are in most cases 
uniformly rounded, but with the part next the edge slightly 
drawn down so as to form a shallow fluting. In some 
instances, however, there is a more or less bold rounded 
central rib, or else projecting ridges running along the 
greater part of the blade near the edges. They differ 
considerably in the form of the plate for the hilt, and in 
the number and arrangement of the rivets by which the 
covering material was attached. This latter usually con- 
sisted of plates of horn, bone or wood, riveted on each side 
of the hilt plate. In rare instances the outer part of the 
hilt was of bronze." (Evans.) Sometimes, though rarely, a 
pommel has been cast on to the handle, and occasionally 
a considerable part of the scabbard was made of the same 
material as the blade, though probably, for the most part, 
the sheaths were of leather or wood. 

The spear-heads found in this island are of the socketed 
variety, great care and skill having been bestowed on the 
coring. They may be divided into the following classes : 
(1) The simple leaf-shaped, either long and narrow, or 
broad, with holes in the socket through which to pass 
the rivets to fasten them to the shaft. (2) The looped, 
with eyes on each side of the socket below and on 
the same plane with the blade. These are generally 
of the long, narrow, straight-edged kind. (3) Those 
with loops in the angles between the edge of the blade 
and the socket. (4) Those with side apertures and per- 
forations through the blade. (5) Those in which the base 
of each side of the blade projects at right angles to the 
socket, or is prolonged downwards so as to form barbs. 
Besides these weapons of offence, pieces of defensive armour, 



86 



LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 



in the shape of shields, bucklers and helmets, have been 
found, for a full description of which the reader is referred 
to the work of Sir John Evans on "Ancient Bronze 






Fig. 30. — Bronze Pins found in Ireland. (Sir John Evans.) One 
has a loop at the side, the other has a turned-over head of the 
type described in the text. 



Weapons of Great Britain," a work which must form the 
basis of all study of this subject. 

Amongst articles of personal adornment may be men- 
tioned pins, either for fastening the clothes or for the hair, 



THE BRONZE PERIOD 87 

which have been found in great quantities and of very 
various patterns, the head being sometimes turned over 
so as to be visible when stuck in the clothes, just as 
that of a scarf-pin is when placed in a tie. Others have 
rings or loops attached to them and others again are 




Fig. 31. — Torque found at Wedmore, Somerset. 
(Sir John Evans.) 



ornamented with patterns of various kinds. To this 
period also belong the torques, or twisted necklets, 
bracelets, finger and ear rings, sometimes of gold, some- 
times of bronze, which have been found in various parts of 
these islands. The torque seems to have been a favourite 
ornament of the Celtic race ; it " takes its name from the 



88 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

Latin torques, which again is derived a torquendo. This 
word torques was applied to a twisted collar of gold or 
other metal worn around the neck. Among the ancient 
Gauls gold torques appear to have been abundant, and to 
have formed an important part of the spoils acquired from 
them by their Roman conquerors. About 223 B.C., when 




Fig. 32. — Bronze Caldron found in Carlimvark Loch, Kirkcud- 
brightshire. (Scot. Ant. Mus.) It is composed of thin plates 
of bronze riveted together. 



Flaminius Nepos gained his victory over the Gauls on the 
Addua, it is related that instead of the Gauls dedicating, as 
they had intended, a torque made from the spoils of the 
Roman soldiers to their god of war, Flaminius erected to 
Jupiter a golden trophy made from the Gaulish torques. 
The name of the Torquati, a family of the Manlia gens, 
was derived from their ancestor, T. Manlius, having, in B.C. 
361, slain a gigantic Gaul in single combat, whose torque he 



THE BRONZE PERIOD 89 

took from his dead body after cutting off the head, and 
placed it around his own neck." (Evans.) Some of these 
torques are of great size, one in the possession of the Duke 
of Westminster, which was found near Holywell in Flint- 
shire, is of gold, measures 44 inches in circumference and 
weighs 28 ounces. 

Vessels, cups and caldrons of gold and bronze were made 




Fig. 33. — Stone Mould for casting flat Bronze Axes and Knife, 
found in Ireland. (Scot. Ant. Mus. ) 



at this period, the last mentioned being sometimes formed 
of thin plates of bronze riveted together, and having rings 
or lugs by which they could be lifted. The objects in 
bronze appear to have been cast in the following ways, as 
summarised by Sir John Evans : (1) In a single mould 
formed of loam, sand, stone, or metal, the upper surface of 
the casting exhibiting the flat surface of a molten metal, 
which was left open to the air. In the case of loam or sand 
castings a pattern or model would be used, which might be 
an object already in use, or made of the desired form in 



90 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

wood or other soft substance. Several specimens of stone 
moulds for the casting of celts or spear-heads have been 
discovered. (2) In double moulds of similar materials. 
The castings produced in this manner, when in an un- 
finished condition, show the joints of the moulds. When 
sand was employed a frame or flask of some kind must have 
been used to retain the material in place when the upper 
half of the mould was lifted off the pattern. The loam 
moulds were probably burnt hard before being used. In 
many cases cores for producing hollows in the castings were 
employed in conjunction with these moulds, Double moulds 
have also been found for the casting of celts. (3) In what 
may be termed solid moulds. For this process the model 
was made of wax, wood, or some combustible material, 
which was encased in a mass of loam, possibly mixed with 
cow-dung or vegetable matter, which on exposure to heat 
left the loam or clay in a porous condition. This exposure 
to fire also burnt out the wax or wood model and left a 
cavity for the reception of the metal, which was probably 
poured in while the mould was still hot. 

The pottery of the period, consisting of urns for the ashes 
of the dead after cremation, of pots for cooking, drinking 
vessels, &c, seems to have been made by hand, and was 
ornamented with simple patterns formed by dots and straight 
lines. Indeed the art of the period is very simple in its 
character, being limited to geometrical designs, such as 
circles, triangles, crosses, chevrons, and the like. 

The clothing was of linen and wool, and portions of 
the apparatus for spinning and weaving both of these 
materials have been discovered. Naturally, perishable 
fabrics such as these are but seldom found, but in the 
Scale-house barrow at Rylstone, the body had been 
covered from head to foot in cloth before being placed 
in the hollow oak tree which served for a coffin. Further, 
a wooden coffin was found in a tumulus in Jutland, con- 



THE BRONZE PERIOD 



91 



taining a body, the clothing of which had been preserved 
by the presence of certain salts in the water. The body 
had been wrapped in a coarse woollen cloak which was 




Fig. 34. — Pottery from a Bronze Age Cemetery in Scotland. 
(Scot. Ant. Mus.) 



almost semicircular and hollowed out at the neck. On its 
inner side were left hanging a great number of short woollen 
threads, which gave it somewhat the appearance of plush. 
A box beside the body contained, amongst other articles, a 
woollen cap, and there were also in the coffin two woollen 



92 LIFE IN EARLY. BRITAIN 

shawls, of a square shape and with long fringes. A shirt, 
also of wool, cut out a little at the neck and with a long 
projecting tongue at one of the upper angles, had been 
fastened round the body by a long woollen band which went 
twice round the waist and hung down in front. Two woollen 
leggings and traces of leather, probably representing the 
remains of the boots, complete the equipment of this early 
believer in Jager's all-wool theory of clothing. 

The people of the era appear to have arranged their hair 
in a large shock or pyramid, and if the length of the hairpins, 
some of which measure twenty inches, is to be taken as a 
criterion, this must at times have attained a huge size. 
Like some savage races of to-day who treat their hair in a 
similar manner, they used, at least in Switzerland, where 
pottery head-rests of a crescentic shape have been found, to 
support their necks alone and not their heads whilst sleeping, 
for fear of disarranging a head of hair which must have 
given them considerable trouble to arrange. 

Besides the metal ornaments mentioned previously, they 
decorated their persons with necklaces of stone, bone, and 
glass, as well as of amber. 



CHAPTER V 
THE BRONZE PERIOD— continued 

Camps — Maiden Castle — Yarnbury — Caer Caradoc - — 
Bridges — Stonehenge — Avebury — The Rollright Stones — 
Folk-lore— Menhirion — Round Barrows — Celtic Religion — 
Godiva's Ride — Physical Characteristics — Social Life. 

Having in the previous chapter considered some of the 
smaller relics of the Bronze age, there remain for investiga- 
tion some of the larger of their works, such as camps, 
barrows, and megalithic remains. 

Most hilly parts of England afford examples of the kind 
of earthwork known as a camp, a form of fortification 
which consists of a circular bank of earth, called a vallum, 
enclosing an area of variable size, and having on its outer 
aspect a ditch called the fosse. 

Sometimes there are two or three concentric series of 
ramparts and ditches in the case of the larger and better 
fortified camps. Though the space which is enclosed is 
nearly always of a more or less rounded shape, it would be 
a mistake to suppose that all British camps are circular. 
Such no doubt is the case where the camp is placed on a 
flat surface or where the contour of the hill favours that 
shape, but where an oval or other figure is more in con- 
formity with the top of the hill which had to be fortified, a 
camp of the corresponding contour has been constructed. 
Again, in some cases, as at the great camp of Croft Ambrey, 
near Ludlow, the artificial ramparts are wanting on one side, 



94 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

but where this is the case it will be found that it is because 
the natural declivity of the hill is so great at that part as to 
render other defences unnecessary. It may be well here to 
mention that the quadrilateral camps also met with through- 
out the country, though not with such frequency as the 
other variety, are of Roman origin, and will be more fully 
dealt with at a later part of this work. Sometimes a camp 
of each kind is to be found in the same neighbourhood, as 
on the hill above Dunster in Somersetshire, where a Roman 
camp is placed within a few hundred yards of one of the 
circular fortifications of the Britons. The fosse and vallum 
were traversed at one or more points by openings, often 
guarded by advanced earthworks, and probably closed in 
times of war with masses of timber. 

But a description of a few examples will enable the 
reader to form a better idea of what an ancient British camp 
was like. Maiden Castle was the British predecessor of the 
Roman Durnovaria, now the Dorsetshire Dorchester, close 
to which it stands. It has been identified with great pro- 
bability with the city called Dunium by Ptolemy. The 
name appears to be derived from Celtic words meaning the 
Hill of Strength, a title which might well be applied to one 
of the most extensive and most strongly fortified earthworks 
in England. It occupies the flat summit of a natural hill, 
is iooo yards long and 500 wide, and is surrounded by 
double, and in part by triple, ditches and ramparts, the 
latter being exceedingly steep and even now sixty feet in 
height. It appears to have had four entrances, defended 
by advanced earthworks, and is divided internally into two 
parts by a ditch and bank of very much lower elevation than 
those forming the outer defences. In having been the pre- 
cursor of a Roman and subsequently of an English town, 
Maiden Castle is not singular, for the same has happened 
at other places, Old Sarum, for example, having been almost 
certainly British, and Oswestry having been preceded by 



THE BRONZE PERIOD 95 

the large triple-ramparted camp, now overgrown with trees 
and nettles, which is situated about a mile off and is called 
Hen Dinas or Old Oswestry. It will be noted that the 
shape of Maiden Castle is oval, in conformity with the shape 
of the top of the hill which it occupies. For an example of 
a great circular camp, that known as Yarnbury, may be 
selected. This is situated about two miles from Stonehenge, 
on Salisbury Plain and close to the old road between Bath 
and Salisbury. It is surrounded by a double fosse and 
vallum, the inner ditch being fifty feet deep, and the principal 
entrance is defended by a complicated arrangement of 
earthworks. In its neighbourhood are a host of other 
camps of the same period. On the Herefordshire Beacon, 
near Malvern, is another great British camp, which possesses 
a triple fosse and vallum of irregular outline, following the 
shape of the hill. This camp is said to have been the work 
of, or at least to have been occupied by, the British chieftain 
Caratacos, or, as he is generally but incorrectly described, 
Caractacus. This chieftain's name is, however, more closely 
associated with another camp situated on the top of the hill 
called Caer Caradoc, which is situated near Church Stretton 
in Shropshire, and at the foot of which tradition places the 
site of the decisive battle between Caratacos and Ostorius 
Scapula, The ditches in this case are quite shallow, no 
doubt because the exceeding steepness of the hill rendered 
more formidable earthworks unnecessary. 

It has been already mentioned that sometimes pit- 
dwellings are found within ramparts of a similar character, 
as, for instance, on the top of Chalbury Hill, familiar to 
visitors to Weymouth. In their neighbourhood are also 
sometimes found remains of the terrace or " lynchet " form 
of cultivation. 

In the West of England, on Dartmoor and Exmoor, have 
been found a few bridges which have been assigned to this 
period. One of the finest of these is known as Tarr or Torr 



96 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

Steps, and crosses the River Barle, not far from Winsford on 
Exmoor. It is composed of a number of solid, though 
short piers built up of stones, laid on the top of one another 
without any cement or mortar. Large flat slabs of stone, 
stretching from one pier to the next, form the pathway, a 
pathway which is submerged when the river is in flood, but 
which at other times affords an excellent passage for those 
on foot, a ford just above serving for the crossing of horses, 

But the most striking stone erections of this period are 
the great circles, of which Stonehenge is the best-known 
example. 

This great, though ruinous temple, for temple it seems 
certainly to have been, has been assigned by some to a 
Roman or even post-Roman date, but the general consensus 
of opinion amongst archaeologists is that it is a work of the 
Bronze period, though of a late date, as seems to be proved 
by the fact that it is the only circle of the kind in which the 
stones have been hewn and shaped, all the others being 
composed of rough and unworked boulders. Mr. Arthur 
Evans thinks that the construction was in part at least of a 
gradual character, and that its foundation belongs to the 
same age as the latest class of the round-barrows by which 
it was surrounded — a class of barrows which it would not 
be safe to bring down beyond the approximate date of 
250 b.c. On the other hand, he says, if we are to accept 
the view that the construction itself was gradual and that, 
in particular, the blue stones were set up in groups at 
intervals of time, we may carry down some parts of the 
monument to a considerably later date. 

The collection of stones which forms this monument is 
surrounded by a low bank and ditch, enclosing a circle 
100 feet in diameter, a measurement which is common to 
several of these temples, to which the general term of 100 
feet circles has been applied. 

Within this circle, now almost obliterated, are a few 



THE BRONZE PERIOD 



97 




Fig. 35. — General Plan of Stonehenge. A, Stone circles in centre 
of circular earthen bank and ditch ; B, Standing stone, called 
"The Friar's Heel"; C, Large fallen stone; D, D, Two 
smaller stones on margin of earthen bank ; E, E, Barrows, 
which, being absorbed in the earthen bank, appear to have 
been of earlier construction than the bank. (From Murray's 
" Handbook to Wiltshire.") 



98 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

upright stones with many others in a more or less recumbent 
position, indeed such is their confusion, that it is difficult 
even for experts to arrive at any certain conclusion as to all 
the details of the perfect temple. Under these circum- 
stances it will be better to consider Stonehenge as it probably 




Fig. 36. — Conjectural Restoration of Stonehenge. A, Small 
Syenite trilithon, which may have stood here ; it now lies as at 
A in Fig. 38. 



was when complete and uninjured, and to indicate as we go 
on such parts of the structure as are still recognisable. The 
outer circle of stones, the nearest in position to the ditch, 
consisted of thirty upright pillars, each 16 feet in height, 
with imposts or square masses of stone passing from one to 
the next, so as to form a continuous ring. Each upright 
was 3 J feet distant from its neighbour on either side, and 
each had on its upper end two projections, or tenons, each of 



THE BRONZE PERIOD 



99 



which fitted into a corresponding hole or mortice on the 
under surface of one of the imposts. It is obvious that 
much greater security was thus attained than if the imposts 




Fig. 37.— Trilithons and other Stones at Stonehenge. Notice the 
projections on the top of the large upright stones, which fit 
into corresponding depressions on the under surfaces of the 
imposts. (From Barclay's "Stonehenge.") 



had merely been laid upon the uprights. It is perhaps 
unnecessary to state that no mortar or cement was used in 
any of the stone structures of the period. 

The stones of this circle are all of local origin, being the 
sarsens or grey-wethers of Marlborough Down. Of this 



ioo LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

circle, sixteen uprights and six imposts still remain in 
position. About nine feet nearer to the centre was the second 
circle, which consisted of unhewn pillars, probably more 
than thirty in number, of syenite, an igneous rock, which 
must have been brought from a considerable distance, as 
none is known to exist nearer than Wales. These, and 
the others of a similar character, are known as the blue 
stones. 

Each of these stones is about six feet in height, and 
there are now only seven of them left. Within this circle, 
which deprived of its adjuncts would not in any way differ 
from similar simple circles in Wales and elsewhere, was the 
most striking part of the monument, an ellipse consisting of 
at least five and probably seven great trilithons. Each of 
these is composed of two hewn pillars with an impost, and 
they gradually increased in height to the central trilithon, 
which is twenty-five feet in height. Of these trilithons, two 
remain perfect and in situ, there are two other uprights 
standing, but without imposts, and portions of the others 
are lying on the ground. These stones are similar to those 
of the outer circle, and no doubt derived from the same 
place. Within the ellipse of trilithons is an ellipse of nineteen 
pillars of syenite, the material being the same as that of the 
stones which form the inner circle, of which seven are 
still in place. Finally, in the centre of all is a block, 
called, for no valid reason, the altar-stone, which was very 
probably always recumbent. It is of a fine micaceous sand- 
stone, and differs in character from all the other stones of 
which the monument is composed. 

Thus to summarise ; Stonehenge consisted of: — 

(i) A shallow ditch and bank, which opens out at one 
doint into an avenue flanked by a ditch and bank 
on either side. 

(2) A ring of hewn local stones, with imposts mortised 
to them. 



THE BRONZE PERIOD 




S 2 

s S 

2 £ 

m *-> 

o 



io2 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

(3) A ring of unhewn, non-local, igneous pillars. 

(4) An ellipse of local, hewn trilithons, with mortice and 

tenon connection. 

(5) An ellipse of unhewn, non-local, igneous pillars. 

(6) A single recumbent rock of different character from 

the rest. 
It is certainly surprising that so little is said in the works 
of early writers about a monument which would, one would 
have supposed, have excited the wonder of all who might 
see it. It is possible that Hecataeus, a geographer who 
flourished about five hundred years before Christ, may have 
alluded to Stonehenge, when he says that there is a magni- 
ficent circular temple in the island of the Hyperboreans, 
over against Celtica. Giraldus Cambrensis gives us the 
mythical tale which was told to account for it in his day : 
" There was in Ireland, in ancient times, a pile of stones 
worthy of admiration, called the Giant's Dance, because 
giants, from the remotest part of Africa, brought them into 
Ireland, and in the plains of Kildare, not far from the 
Castle of Naas, as well by force of art as strength, miracu- 
lously set them up; and similar stones, erected in a like 
manner, are to be seen there at this day. These stones 
(according to the British history) Aurelius Ambrosius, king 
of the Britons, procured Merlin, by supernatural means, 
to bring from Ireland into Britain. And that he might leave 
some famous monument of so great a treason to future 
ages, in the same order and art as they stood formerly, set 
them up where the flower of the British nation fell by the 
cut-throat practice of the Saxons, and where, under the 
pretence of peace, the ill-secured youth of the kingdom, by 
murderous designs, were slain." As regards the explana- 
tion of these monuments, Mr. Arthur Evans thinks that the 
component parts of stone circles such as Stonehenge, 
namely, the circle itself, the avenue of stones which lead up 
to it, imperfect at Stonehenge, though better marked at 



THE BRONZE PERIOD 



103 



Avebury, and the central dolmen, wanting in the instance 
now under consideration, are all of them amplifications of 
the simplest sepulchral forms. The circle is an enlarged 
version of the ring of stones placed round the grave mound; 
the dolmen represents the cist within it; the avenue is 
merely the continuation of the underground gallery, which 
in the early barrows, described in a previous chapter, leads 
to the sepulchral chamber. The trilithons are a new 
feature in connection with the stone circle, but, as shown 





Fig. 39.— Trilithons in Tripoli. (From Dr. Barth's "Travels.") 



by the example of some of our later long barrows, and by a 
comparison with the monuments of Tripoli, of Syria, of 
India and elsewhere, are themselves only the perpetuation 
of a part of the sepulchral structure, the actual gateway of 
the subterranean chamber, which remains as a ritual survival 
when, owing to cremation or other causes, the galleried 
chamber to which it led has itself been modified away. 
Like the circles themselves, and like the avenue, the 
trilithon is of sepulchral origin, and connects itself directly 
with the worship of departed spirits. Finally, he thinks 



104 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

that the original holy object within the central trilithons of 
Stonehenge was a sacred tree, and in this connection he 
reminds us that the oak was of special sanctity amongst the 
Celtic nations, as shown, amongst other things, by the words 
of Maximus Tyrius, "The Celts worship Zeus, and the 
Celtic image of Zeus is a tall oak." Professor Rhys in his 
"Hibbert Lectures" replies as follows to the question 
" Whose temple Stonehenge was, or whose it chiefly was ? 
After giving it all the attention I can, I have come to the 
conclusion that we cannot do better than follow the story of 
Geoffrey, which makes Stonehenge the work of Merlin 
Emrys, commanded by another Emrys, which I interpret to 
mean that the temple belonged to the Celtic Zeus whose 
later legendary self we have in Merlin." 

In the same county as Stonehenge, but further north, is 
a second collection of great stones, now unfortunately even 
more reduced in numbers, which in the time of Charles II. 
was described by Aubrey as surpassing Stonehenge as much 
as a cathedral did a parish church. This monument 
is Avebury or Abury, and the village of that name which 
now lies within the ditch has been the destruction of the 
temple, whose stones have been used up for building and 
even for road-mending purposes, more than 650 having 
thus perished. The temple was surrounded by a rampart 
and fosse, the latter being internal and not external as in 
the case of fortifications. This rampart and fosse form 
nearly a circle, with a diameter of 1200 ft., a circumference 
of 4442 ft., and enclosing an area of 28 J acres. From 
the top of the rampart to the bottom of the fosse is a depth 
of 40 ft. 

Inside the ditch was a circle of rough stones supposed to 
have been 100 in number, and this again enclosed two 
neighbouring, not concentric, circles, each again containing 
a smaller circle and a group of stones forming what is 
called a cove. These, it seems probable, originally contained 



THE BRONZE PERIOD 



105 




■■ \ , ■■ ■ . 



^^mm^^a}^^^ 




Fig. 40. — Conjectural Restoration of Avebury. Silbury Hill is 
seen in the distance. The circles of stones were much less 
regular than is above shown, and there is no evidence for 
Stukeley's Beckhampton Avenue. (From Murray's " Hand- 
book to Wiltshire.") 




9 ^ 

Fig. 41. — Plan of Avebury and surrounding country. A, The 
Kennet Avenue of stones leading to Overton Circle, O ; 
B, Stukeley's supposed avenue to Beckhampton ; c, c, Roman 
Road ; d, d, British trackway ; e, Beckhampton ; g, West 
Kennett Long Barrow ; h, East Kennett Long Barrow. 
(From Murray's " Handbook to Wiltshire.") 



106 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

interments. An avenue of stones, of which fifteen still 
remain, led S.W. to West Kennet, and according to 
Stukeley, though it is more than doubtful whether he had 
any valid reason for making the assertion, there was a 
second avenue leading to Beckhampton in the opposite 
direction. The size of some of the stones forming this 
monument is immense ; one destroyed in recent years 
weighed ninety tons, and another still remaining is esti- 
mated to weigh sixty. It may well cause wonder as to how 
these huge stones were transported to this spot and reared 
up on end in the cavities prepared for them, especially by a 
people possessed of only the rudest mechanical appliances 
to assist them in their task. Perhaps we may obtain a clue 
as to the manner in which the stones were moved by look- 
ing at the pictures of the transport of the huge stone 
figures of Egypt, as represented on some of the buildings 
of that country. In the representation of the colossal 
statue of Thothotpu being dragged to its place, we see the 
figure itself on a sort of flat wheelless sled to which 
numbers of slaves are attached by cords. The captain 
stands on the knees of the statue to urge on those who are 
dragging it, and an attendant on the pedestal pours water 
on the ropes, lest their tension should cause them to take 
fire. But we have a further example of how the work of 
shaping and carrying these huge stones may have been 
effected, by the way in which it is carried out by the 
Khasis, a tribe of Northern Bengal, who break and flake 
their blocks by heating them along the required line of 
fracture and then pouring water upon them. They trans- 
port them by placing wooden rollers underneath and then 
harnessing numbers of men to them with ropes of rattan. 
When it is necessary to set a block upright, one end is 
slipped into a hole some feet in depth, whilst the other is 
pulled upon by the ropes. And finally, when it is desired 
to lift one block into position on the top of others, a slope 



THE BRONZE PERIOD 107 

of earth is constructed leading up to the desired altitude 
and then the impost is pulled up the slope upon rollers. 
Obviously it is possible that huge masses can be trans- 
ported even with rude means, all that is necessary being a 
sufficiency of men and of enthusiasm. There must have 
been no lack of either at the building of Avebury. Before 
passing to the consideration of any other stone circle, it 
may be well to mention that remarkable conical earthwork 
close by, called Silbury Hill. This mound, the largest 
artificial earthwork of its kind in England and probably in 
Europe, covers with its base over five acres of ground, is 
1657 ft. in circumference and 170 ft. in height. It was 
originally surrounded by a circle of sarsen stones, nearly 
all of which have disappeared. Its origin and date are 
equally doubtful ; it is apparently not sepulchral, at least 
all excavations so far have failed to find any remains, and 
whether it has any relation to the megalithic circle at Ave- 
bury is a question which may perhaps never be cleared up. 
Its gigantic size and the labour which its construction must 
have cost afford another example of the energy and 
engineering skill of the period. 

Another interesting monument of this class is that called 
the Rollright stones, most of which are in Oxfordshire, 
though only just in that county. The boundary between 
that county and Warwickshire is formed by an ancient road 
which passes between the circle and dolmen on the one 
hand and the menhir on the other. This circle is one of 
the hundred feet variety, but the stones of which it is 
composed are insignificant in size, the tallest being 7 ft. 
and most of them ranging between 2 ft. and 4 ft. The 
circle is locally called the King's Men. Not far off is a 
group of stones called the Whispering Knights, which 
consists of the remains of a collapsed dolmen. On the 
other side of the road, and near a long artificial mound of 
earth, of uncertain nature, which the imaginative Stukeley 



108 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

called the Arch- Druid's barrow, is a single standing stone, or 
menhir, named the King's Stone. The legend which is 
related about these stones may be cited as a good example 
of the kind of story which grows up around such relics. 
The king is said to have set out with his men to conquer 
England. Arrived at the top of the hill where the stones 
stand he meets a witch who says : 

" If Long Compton thou canst see 
King of England thou shalt be." 

Long Compton, it should be said, is a village in the valley 
north of the stones and just invisible from them. The king, 
delighted at what he supposes will be the triumphant issue 
of his expedition, exclaims : 

" Stick, stock, stone, 
As King of England I shall be known." 

As he speaks the mound of earth near the menhir rises up 
before him and prevents him from seeing the village, whilst 
the witch exclaims : 

" As Long Compton thou canst not see 
King of England thou shalt not be. 
Rise up stick, and stand still stone, 
For King of England thou shalt be none, 
For thou and thy men hoar stones shall be, 
And I myself an eldern tree." 

Thereupon they all turn, the witch into an alder tree, the 
rest into stones, the menhir being the king, the circle his 
army and the dolmen his officers, either engaged at the time 
of their transmutation in prayer or in plotting against their 
leader, according to different versions of the story. Further 
traditions attach to these stones, in common with others of 
the same character in different parts of the country, such as 
that it is impossible to count them correctly, that they arise at 
midnight to dance with one another and the like ; but the 
point of greatest interest, perhaps, is related to their name, 



THE BRONZE PERIOD 109 

which appears, according to Mr. Arthur Evans, to have been 
properly Rollendrice, and to have meant the kingdom or 
dominion of Roland. Thus the group of stones whose 



f 







Fig. 42. — Menhir, the " King Stone," at Rollright. 

original name and signification had long been forgotten, was 
in later ages associated with the name and fame of Roland, 
the legendary champion of Christendom against the paynim. 
In connection with this group of stones mention has been 
made of a menhir, and it may now be well to say something 



no LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

about this kind of monument. The menhir derives its 
name from two Celtic words meaning a standing stone, and 
is the simplest and most obvious form of memorial or 
monument which can be imagined. This being so, one is 
not surprised to find that it is not specially associated with 
any age or with any country, indeed Cleopatra's needle and 
many of the memorials in our own towns and cemeteries are 
nothing more than glorified menhirion. But using the term 
as it is employed in British archaeology it is limited to 
single, unhewn, standing stones, probably belonging chiefly 
to the Bronze, but certainly also to the Neolithic period. 
These stones are very variable in shape, being sometimes 
long and comparatively narrow, like the great menhir of 
Carnac and others, sometimes larger at the upper part, like 
the Kingstone at Rollright ; sometimes wide flat slabs, like 
the great Clun menhir in Shropshire, which is 8 ft. in 
height, 6 ft. 6 in. in breadth and 8 in. to 1 2 in. in thickness. 
Sometimes they appear to have been erected on the summits 
of barrows, sometimes, as we have already seen, they formed 
a ring round their base. Mr. Stevens points out that such 
monoliths are associated also with long barrows and with 
ancient grave mounds in other countries. He says : " In 
the chambered tumulus at Ablington, Gloucestershire, there 
was found a large upright oval stone, 6 ft. in height and 
5 ft. in width, standing on a block of stone having a natural 
perforation and by which it was steadied and kept in its 
place. Upon a long barrow at Duntesbourne Abbots, 
Gloucestershire, is a monolith known as the ' Hoar Stone, 5 
and upon another long barrow in the same county is a 
monolith known as the ' Tingle Stone.' The ancient 
Greeks, in like manner, appear to have placed a monolith 
(o-TrjXr}) upon the summit of some of their tumuli, and 
Paris, taking his position behind such a pillar on the 
barrow of Ilus, shot at Diomede, wounding him in the foot." 
Such stones have been in other countries not merely 



THE BRONZE PERIOD in 

memorials of some great deed or departed hero, but objects 
of worship, and the same was probably the case in this 
country. Indeed Mr. Gomme calls attention to a curious 
custom in connection with such a stone, which looks like 
the degenerated remains of a real act of sacrifice offered to 
a menhir. "At the village of Holne, situated on one of 
the spurs of Dartmoor, is a field of about two acres, the 
property of the parish, and called the Ploy Field. In the 
centre of this field stands a granite pillar (menhir) 6 ft. or 7 ft. 
high. On May morning, before daybreak, the young men 
of the village used to assemble there and then proceed to 
the moor, where they selected a ram lamb, and after running 
it down brought it in triumph to the Ploy Field, fastened it 
to the pillar, cut its throat, and then roasted it whole, skin, 
wool, &c. At mid-day a struggle took place, at the risk of 
cut hands, for a slice ; it being supposed to confer luck for 
the ensuing year on the fortunate devourer. As an act of 
gallantry the young men sometimes fought their way through 
the crowd to get a slice for the chosen amongst the young 
women, all of whom, in their best dresses, attended the 
Ram Feast as it was called. Dancing, wrestling, and other 
games, assisted by copious libations of cider during the 
afternoon, prolonged the festivity till midnight." 

The places of interment of this race, like those of the 
people who preceded it, are marked by mounds or barrows, 
which are, however, smaller, nearly always circular, and in 
this country devoid of the passage and chambers which 
formed a feature of the long barrow. 

The shape of these barrows on elevation is sometimes 
like a bowl, more rarely like a disc or even a bell. In 
some of them the remains of the dead are buried in the 
same crouched up position as they occupy in the long 
barrows, in others there is an urn containing the ashes 
which have resulted from the cremation of the corpse, and 
in both cases there may be found implements of different 



H2 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

kinds laid beside the remains. These two systems of burial 
have undoubtedly been pursued simultaneously, and may 
perhaps mark a divergence in religious ideas between the 
two sections of the Celts. It is at least possible that the 
Goidelic branch may have conformed to the funeral customs 
of the Neolithic race, whilst the Brythonic people, perhaps 
from veneration for the sun, perhaps from the idea of puri- 
fying the body, may have resorted to the practice of crema- 
tion. However this may be, it is interesting to find that 




Fig. 43. — Round Barrows near Stonehenge. (After a plate in 
Barclay's ' ' Stonehenge. ' ' ) 

sometimes both kinds of interment have been met with in 
the same barrow, one being secondary to the other. In 
these cases the earlier burial is usually that of the unburnt 
body, the secondary being that of the cremated, but this is 
not an invariable rule. So far as it goes this evidence also 
points in the direction above mentioned that the earlier 
Goidelic race was that which practised inhumation. There 
are great numbers of these round barrows scattered over the 
country, and in some parts of it many may be seen close 
together. Around Stonehenge, for example, there are about 



THE BRONZE PERIOD 113 

three hundred within a circuit of three miles. There 
ore a number of others in the vicinity of Avebury, and in 
one spot on the road between Weymouth and Bridport 
twenty can be seen at once, a spot, says Stukeley, "for 
sight of barrows not to be equalled in the world." In 
certain places they, as well as other mounds of earth, 
artificial and natural, have been supposed to be the homes 
of fairies, and names such as the Fairy Know or Fairy Hill 
applied to them. In one instance such a mound affords 
what seems to be an example of the extraordinary persist- 
ence and endurance of a tradition. Near the town of Mold 
there was a cairn called Bryn-yr-Ellyllon, the hill of the fairy 
or of the goblin, which was long said to be haunted by a 
ghost in golden armour, who was seen to enter it from time 
to time. When the tomb was opened there was found 
within it the skeleton of what had been a fine tall man 
with a corselet of bronze overlaid by gold, of Etruscan work, 
says Professor Boyd Dawkins, and probably belonging to 
the Romano-British period. Unless we are to believe that 
the ghost really did walk, we must admit that the tradition 
had been handed down of this warrior's burial in his armour 
for perhaps fourteen hundred years. 

The religion of the Celts, both Brythons and Goidels, was 
polytheistic, and the names of some of their gods and minor 
deities have come down to us. Of these the principal Bry- 
thonic deity seems to have been Teutates, the god of war, in 
whose honour the stone inscribed " Marti Toutati " found 
in Hertfordshire was probably erected. In this country, 
Teutates seems perhaps more often to have been spoken 
of under the name of Camulus, a name which enters into 
the formation of the word Camulodunum, the title of the 
city which preceded the modern Colchester. 

Taranis, another deity, seems to have been the summer- god, 
and Nodens, the god of the sea, had a temple at Lydney on 
the Severn even in the Roman times. Among the Goidels the 

H 



ii 4 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

Irish Boann, a minor goddess, the deity of the Boyne in 
Ireland, is an example of the personification of rivers under 
the guise of minor deities, another instance of which in 
Britain is Sabrina, the goddess of the Severn, 

" Sabrina fair, 

Listen where thou art sitting 
Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave, 

In twisted braids of lilies knitting 
The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair," 

as Milton wrote in "Comus." Other minor deities figure in 
our stories of to-day as giants. Thus Rabelais took his 
name of Gargantua from such a half-deity, half-hero. A 
dolmen in France is shown to this day as his tomb. 
Goemagot, another similar personage, becomes Gogmagog, 
the name of a range of what pass for hills in Cambridge- 
shire, and of the well-known giants of the Mansion House. 

The Celt, however, of both families, seems to have in 
some measure adopted the Druidism of the Neolithic 
peoples with whom he came in contact on reaching the 
island. In so doing he only conformed to what seems 
to have been almost a general rule where an Aryan and a 
non-Aryan race have come in contact, as Mr. Tylor and 
Mr. Gomme have pointed out. Such is the case in 
Scandinavia, where the Lapp is looked upon as being a very 
superior magician to the later occupants of the land, and in 
India, where the non-Aryan races, despised and harried 
though they may be during the rest of the year by their 
Aryan neighbours, are yet brought into the villages of the 
latter on solemn occasions to perform the religious cere- 
monies which are supposed to be more effectively performed 
by them than by any other. A curious instance of this 
is given by Walhouse, which may be cited, as showing the 
kind of thing w T hich may perhaps have happened in this 
country centuries ago. " The Kurumbas of Nulli, one of 
the wildest Nilgherry declivities, come up annually to wor- 



THE BRONZE PERIOD 115 

ship at one of the dolmens on the tableland above, in which 
they say one of their old gods resides. Though they are re- 
garded with fear and hatred as sorcerers by the agricultural 
Badagas of the tableland, one of them must, nevertheless, 
at sowing-time, be called to guide the first plough for two or 
three yards, and go through a mystic pantomime of propi- 
tiation to the earth deity, without which the crop would 
certainly fail. When so summoned, the Kurumba must 
pass the night by the dolmens alone, and I have seen one 
who had been called from his present dwelling for the 
morning ceremony, sitting after dark on the capstone of 
a dolmen, with heels and hams drawn together and chin on 
knees, looking like some huge ghostly fowl perched on the 
mysterious stone." It is probable that the later coming 
Aryans, here and elsewhere, might have considered the 
inhabitants whom they found on their arrival as somewhat 
uncanny, and, again, it is highly probable that they 
reasoned that their priests, the Druids, having been longer 
in occupation, were better able to approach the local 
divinities with hope of success than those who were strangers 
in the land. 

There is a statement by Pliny that the wives and 
daughters-in-law of the Britons attended certain religious 
rites without clothing and with their bodies painted black 
like Ethiopians. To which race this statement applies is 
more than doubtful, but it is possible, if Mr. Hartland's 
surmise is correct, that we have a trace of this rite in the 
processions which took place in Coventry and Southam in 
honour of Lady Godiva. Though Godgifu, or Godiva, was 
an historical personage, her celebrated ride is purely mythical, 
a good example, indeed, of the kind of myth which, without 
any reason, often becomes attached to some hero or heroine. 
The essence of the tale consists in the passage of a naked 
woman through a town where the men were not allowed to 
look out upon her, and such a story is not peculiar to 



n6 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

England, as readers of the " Arabian Nights " will remember. 
Now, we know that in Rome the religious rites of the deity 
known as the Bona Dea were performed by women alone 
and that men were forbidden under the severest penalties to 
intrude upon them. It is highly probable that the rite of 
which Pliny speaks may have been of a similar character, and 
that it may gradually, in the manner which has been already 
pointed out, have dwindled down and lost all its original 
significance. The probability that this view is correct is 
much increased by the fact that in the procession of Southam, 
no very great distance from Coventry, there were two 
Godivas, one of whom was of the natural colour, but the 
other was black, and formed, perhaps, the last link in 
the chain stretching back to the woad-painted British 
matron of Pliny. 

It now only remains to speak of the physical character- 
istics of the Celts. They were a tall race, indeed their average 
stature of 5 feet 9 inches, as ascertained by measurements of 
the long bones of their skeletons, exceeded the average of the 
present inhabitants of the island. They were a longer -lived 
race than that which they succeeded, if we are to trust Dr. 
Thurnam's computation, that the average of the Celt was fifty- 
five and of the Neolith forty-five years. Their skulls were 
rounder and broader than those of the previous race, or, to use 
the language of physical anthropology, the Celt was brachy- 
cephalic, or round-headed, the Ivernian, dolichocephalic, or 
long-headed, only in the physical sense of course. The 
skull was also of large size, with a well-formed and broad 
brow and salient ridges above the eyes, and with prominent 
cheek-bones. 

The stature of the Celts seems to have made a great 
impression upon those with whom they were brought in 
contact, for Caesar alludes to their mirifica corpora, whilst 
Strabo, speaking of some of the Coritavi, a tribe who 
inhabited Lincolnshire, says, " To show how tall they were, I 



THE BRONZE PERIOD 117 

saw myself some of their young men at Rome, and they 
were taller by six inches than any one else in the city." 
Many contemporary references also leave little doubt that 
the Celt belonged to a fair or red-haired race. Lucan 
calls the Britons Jidtfi, Silius Italicus says their hair was 
golden, and Vitruvius, in a passage supposed to allude to 
them, speaks of their huge limbs, their grey eyes, and their 
long, straight red hair. In his perhaps partly fanciful de- 
scription of Boudicca or Boadicea, the queen of the Iceni, 
Dion Cassius speaks of her greatness of stature, of the 
fierceness of her appearance, which struck all beholders with 
awe, and of the severe and piercing expression of her 
countenance. She had, he adds, a harsh voice, and a pro- 
fusion of dark, ruddy hair which reached down to her hips. 
The life of the tall, fair-haired, round-headed occupant of this 
land during the Bronze period has been sufficiently dealt 
with in this and the preceding chapter to render unneces- 
sary any prolonged summary of the conditions under which 
he existed. It will be sufficient to point out that he entered 
the island possessed of a greater amount of culture than that 
of the people whom he found in occupation of the land. 
Above all else he understood the art of working in metal, a 
piece of knowledge which differed, not merely in degree 
but in kind, from any possessed by previous inhabitants of 
the land. In correspondence with his wider knowledge and 
perhaps also with his greater strength, the works which he 
undertook were of a more ambitious character than those of 
his predecessors, and included huge earthworks, massive 
stone monuments, and artificial island residences. In the 
arts of spinning and weaving he was an adept, and prided 
himself so much upon using textile clothing instead of gar- 
ments fashioned from skins, as to find in that fact the most 
appropriate name for his race. Such was the inhabitant of 
this country at the time of the Roman occupation, and, as 
will be seen, or indeed has already been seen, from the 



n8 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

description of the Glastonbury lake village, he lived on in 
the land, beside his conquerors, in his own villages. And 
when that conqueror was obliged to desert the country 
which he had occupied for four hundred years, the Celt 
remained behind in possession once more of full sovereignty 
over the land. 

Thus we shall here only leave him for a time, returning to 
the consideration of the race again, after dealing with the 
Romans and their remains. 



CHAPTER VI 
THE ROMAN OCCUPATION OF BRITAIN 

Condition of the Country — Forests — Wild animals — 
Trackways — Roman roads — Camps — Cities — Silchester — 
Uriconium — Corinium. 

When the Romans took possession of this country, it can 
only have been their insatiable zeal for colonisation, coupled 
perhaps with some knowledge of the mineral riches which it 
afforded, which could have induced them to take so much 
trouble over what must have appeared a singularly unin- 
viting spot. For such, the accounts of the earlier visitors, 
whose opinions remain on record, declare it unanimously to 
have been. They speak of its stormy sky, obscured with 
constant rain, of its atmosphere chilly and damp even in 
summer-time, and of the dense fogs, but rarely pierced by the 
rays of the sun, which hung over it like a pall. The im- 
mense forests, with which the land was covered, condensed 
the rain, fallen timber choked up the streams, and caused 
them to spread their waters into wide marshes, so that only 
the higher grounds lifted themselves from the morasses and 
woods. 

It is a little difficult to realise how great a portion of 
the surface of this island was covered with forest at the 
time we are speaking of, and even down to a much later 
period. Nearly the whole of Warwickshire was covered over 
by the Forest of Arden (see Map), the district now occupied 
by Birmingham and the adjacent Black Country towns being 



120 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

then a dense woodland, penetrated by the little stream of 
the Rea, and traversed by one trackway, the Ryknield 
Street. In fact, at a very much later period, it was said 
that a squirrel could leap from tree to tree for nearly the 
whole length of Warwickshire. To-day we can gather some 
idea of its limits by the names of the places which existed 
around its fringes, like Wooton Wawen, with its pre-Con- 
quest church, on its southern border, and Woodend on its 
northern. North of Worcester, the Forest of Wyre, which 
still exists, though shorn of most of its ancient glory, 
extended as far as Chester. Another still existent forest, 
Sherwood, in Nottinghamshire, associated with Robin Hood 
and his crew, was, according to Camden, anciently set with 
trees, whose entangled branches were so twisted together 
that they hardly left room for a man to pass. Of one of its 
outliers, Charnwood Forest, the name only remains, for the 
district has long been disafforested. The Forest of Dean 
was described as "very dark and terrible " on account of its 
gloomy paths and rides, whilst Denbighshire, up to the 
fifteenth century, was one immense forest, from the Dee to 
the region of Snowdonia. In the South of England that 
vast piece of woodland, the Andredsweald, or Forest of 
Anderida, stretched for more than one hundred and twenty 
miles continuously between the North and South Downs, 
and formed a barrier far more impervious than seas, rivers, 
or mountains. These dense woodlands, with their frequent 
marshy bottoms, were inhabited by numerous wild beasts. 
The huger animals of an earlier period had, of course, long 
since disappeared, but wolves swarmed in Arden and 
Sherwood, and the wild ox, or urus, and wild boar were 
objects of the chase at a period long after that with which 
we have now to do. In fact, in the time of Henry II., 
we hear of the citizens of London hunting both the 
last-named animals in the forests of Middlesex. Wolves 
disappeared finally in England somewhere in the fifteenth 



THE ROMAN OCCUPATION OF BRITAIN 121 

century, though they appear to have lingered in the re- 
cesses of the Irish forests until the eighteenth. When the 
bear disappeared is not known, for though it is recorded 
that the city of Norwich gave one of these animals yearly to 
Edward the Confessor, it is possible that it was not a native 
wild beast. Beavers, which have been extinct for a long 
time, must have been plentiful in the wooded swamps, 
judging from the places called after them, such as Beverley, 
in Yorkshire ; Bevere, near Worcester ; and Nant Francon 
(the glen of the beavers), near Llyn Ogwen, in North 
Wales. 

Through these woods in some districts, but more frequently 
along the tops of high ranges of hills, the Celtic people had 
cut narrow roads, known by the name of trackways, remains 
of which may be seen in various parts to the present day. 
Of the Ryknield Street, which ran through Arden, from the 
Fosse Way, near Stow, to Wall on the Watling Street, pieces 
remain here and there, which must very closely resemble 
the condition of that road when actually in use. One 
portion of this way which is probably still much in its 
primitive state is Buckle Street, a narrow trackway which 
runs along the top of the Cotswold Hills, above Broadway, 
and another little altered portion crosses the fields between 
Alcester and Wixford. Another ancient trackway which 
preserves its original appearance is called the Portway, and 
runs along the top of the Longmynd, above Church 
Stretton, in Shropshire, while a second way of the same 
kind crosses, close to the same place, the lower Watling 
Street, and ends in the valley called the Cwms, behind 
Caer Caradoc. Another called the Ridgeway, runs along 
the top of the range of hills which intervenes between 
Weymouth and Dorchester, and many other examples might 
be cited, from which only one further instance, and that the 
most striking, shall be selected. Along the top of the Downs 
above the Vale of White Horse, skirting Ashdown, the 



122 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

yEscandune of Alfred's decisive battle, and that ancient 
barrow, Weyland Smith's forge, is a broad grassy road, 
marked off from the surrounding fields by low banks, and 
called in that part of the country the Green Road. This 
ancient way, which was one of the Quatuor Chimini of the 
Confessor's laws, hereafter to be dealt with, differs from the 
other three apparently in never having been remade by the 
Romans, by whom it must nevertheless have been used. 
Under the name of the Icknield Street, Acling Street, and 
other terms, it makes its way from the neighbourhood of 
Gloucester to Icklingham, in Norfolkshire. Its ancient 
name was the Icenhilde Weg, the path of the warriors of 
the Iceni, a Celtic tribe who dwelt in the district which is 
now Norfolk. This street gives us a good idea of what the 
British trackways in their fullest development must have 
looked like, and one of the great aims of the Romans was 
to construct out of them wide and well-made roads along 
which bodies of troops might be rapidly and easily trans- 
ported from one part of the country to another. Their road- 
making, like all their other works, was carried out in a most 
systematic and careful manner, the exact method of con- 
struction varying with the character of the land through 
which the road had to pass. Thus in the neighbourhood 
of Lincoln the roads through the marshes were upon piles. 
On the other hand a part of the Great Fosse Road, which 
still remains as a monument to the engineering capabilities 
of the Romans, was constructed of the following layers : 
(i) Pavimentum, or foundation of fine earth beaten in 
hard. 

(2) Statumen^ or the bed of the road, which was com- 

posed of large stones, sometimes mixed with mortar. 

(3) Ruderatio, made of small stones also mixed with 

mortar. 

(4) The Nucleus, which was formed by mixing lime, 
chalk, pounded bricks or tiles ; or again, by mixing 
gravel sand, and lime with clay. 



THE ROMAN OCCUPATION OF BRITAIN 123 

(5) The Summum Dorsum, or top of the road, forming 
the actual surface exposed to the wear and tear 
of the traffic. 

Of these roads, three beside the Icknield Street were, 
in the time of Edward the Confessor, called the Quatuor 
Chimini, and placed under the King's Peace, that is to say, 
crimes committed upon them were tried in the King's Court, 
and not in any local court, as would have been the case had 
they taken place on any other road. These three were the 
Watling Street, the Fosse Way, and the Ermine Street, and 
much labour has been spent on the task of tracing out the 
exact line of each, a task rendered none the easier by the 
fact that there are several roads of each of these names, in 
some cases quite unconnected with one another. A few 
words must be devoted to describing the course of each of 
these ways ; and here it may be said that our knowledge of 
the Roman roads and stations is largely drawn from the 
Itinerary of Antoninus, a description of the roads compiled 
probably for military use and ascribed to the age of 
Hadrian or Severus. The most celebrated of the four roads 
received at a later date from the Saxons the name of Watling 
Street, a title, by the way, which, as we learn from Chaucer, 
was also given to the Milky Way (see Map). Starting 
from London, it ran north-west through St. Albans (Veru- 
lamium), Dunstable, Fenny and Stony Stratford, Towcester 
(Lactodorum), crossed the Fosse Road at a place now called 
High Cross, traversed Wall (Etocetum), and finally reached 
Wroxeter (Uriconium). Here it met a second but smaller 
road of the same name, which, starting from Caerleon-on- 
Usk (Isca Silurum), passed through Kenchester (Magna), 
near Hereford, Leintwardine (Branodunum), and the Stret- 
ton Valley. 

Places with names such as Stretton, Stretford, Stratford, 
and the like, found along these and other great roads of 
the time, derive their titles from their proximity to the 
ancient "street." 



124 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

The Fosse Road started from a point north of Seaton, in 
Devonshire, passing thence north-east through Bath (Aquae 
Sulis), Cirencester (Corinium), and Stow-on-the-Wold, to 
High Cross already mentioned. Thence through Leicester 
(Ratae) and Newark it pursued its course to terminate at 
Lincoln (Lindum Colonia). The Ermine Street in later 
times ran nearly due north from London to Lincoln, but 
it is probable from the silence of the Roman itineraries as 
to any direct road between the former city and Huntingdon, 
that the only part of the street which existed at the time 
with which we are now dealing was the northern portion 
between Huntingdon and Lincoln. 

These great streets were provided with many of the 
conveniences possessed by our own main roads at the 
present day. They were marked by milliaria, or mile- 
stones, a number of which have been found in different 
parts of the country along the course of former Roman 
highways. They bore, as is shown by the following example, 
found some time ago about two miles from Leicester 
(Ratse), not merely the distance from the nearest town, 
but also the titles of the reigning Caesar and the year, so 
that it is possible to tell the date at which each was placed 
in its position. 

IMP. CAES. 

DIV. TRAIANI. PARTH. F. NER. NEP. 

TRAIAN. HADRIAN. AVG. P. P. TRIB. 

POT. IV. COS. III. 

A. RATIS. II.* 

Along the roads, at distances varying from seven to twenty 
miles, were placed posting-stations (mansiones) which, at 

* " Imperatore Csesare Divi Trajani Augusti, Maximi Nobilissimi 
Parthici Filio Divo Augusto Maximo Nobilissimo Hadriano Tri- 
bunitii Potestatis Quarto Ter Consulate. A Ratis Duo." 

During the emperorship of the divine, august, most great and 
noble Caesar Hadrian, son of the divine, august, most great and 
noble Trajan, conqueror of Parthia, in the fourth year of his tribu- 
nitian power : thrice consul. Two miles to Leicester. 



THE ROMAN OCCUPATION OF BRITAIN 125 

first intended for the use of the military only, eventually 
came to resemble the inns of our own day, and provided 
hospitality for travellers of all kinds. In many places the 
cemeteries were placed by the sides of great roads ; indeed, 
so many funeral monuments have been discovered by the 
side of the road between York and Tadcaster (Calcaria), 
that it has received the name of the Street of Tombs. 

As the Romans pushed their military operations deeper 
and deeper into the heart of the country, they were naturally 
confronted with the necessity of providing suitable accommo- 
dation, either temporary or permanent, for their troops. 
Where possible they, no doubt, saved themselves the 
trouble of constructing fortifications of their own by 
utilising, with or without modification, those British camps 
whose occupants had fled or been expelled. Hence we meet 
with many fortresses which have been successively used by 
these races and by those who came after them in the land, 
such as old Sarum, the Roman Sorbiodunum, a place whose 
history is an instance of what has occurred at many another 
spot of less strategic advantage and fame. " Celt and 
Roman alike," writes Mr. Green, "had seen the military 
value of the height from which the eye sweeps nowadays 
over the grassy meadows of the Avon to the arrowy spire of 
Salisbury; and admirable as the position was in itself, it 
had been strengthened at a vast cost of labour. The camp 
on the summit of the knoll was girt in by a trench hewn so 
deeply in the chalk that from the inner side of it the white 
face of the rampart rose one hundred feet high, while strong 
outworks protected the approaches to the fortress, from the 
west and from the east." This fortress long held out against 
the progress of the West Saxons, barring their approach up 
the Avon Valley, and finally fell, probably because want of 
food or water caused its defenders to evacuate it. It was 
afterwards held by the Saxons and Danes, and here Canute 
died. In Norman times, William the Conqueror summoned 



i 2 6 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

his barons to Old Sarum to renew their oath of fealty. Its 
decay dates from the time when the Bishop and clergy, 
weary of squabbles with the military, and probably also 
influenced by the chronic want of water, migrated to the 
plains and founded the present City of Salisbury. In later 
times, Old Sarum appears as the rottenest of rotten boroughs, 
whose two members were returned by one elector, and now 
its earthworks alone remain as an imperishable monument 
of its former greatness. 

But where the Romans had to undertake the construction 
of a camp from the beginning, the plan which they pre- 
ferred was that of a quadrangle, with four gates or entrances, 
one in each side, and often protected by advance earth- 
works. Of these earthworks, castra exploratoria, or tempo- 
rary fortifications, such as might be thrown up by the 
advance guard of an army, and castra cestiva, which were 
intended to be used during a whole season, are generally 
placed on the tops of hills, and, consequently, are not 
so regular in their outline as the more permanent con- 
structions. Careful rules were laid down by the Roman 
authorities on castrametation as to the selection of 
localities for the camps, and Hyginus, in a treatise of the 
kind, enumerates the objects which should be avoided as 
neighbours for the proposed camp. These he calls novercce, 
a word meaning mothers-in-law, that much -abused character 
having thus early acquired an evil reputation. " Those 
defects which our ancestors called novercse," he says, 
" should always be avoided ; such as a hill commanding 
the camp, by which the enemy can descend in attack, or 
see what is done in the camp ; or a wood where the enemy 
can lie in ambush ; or ravines or valleys by which they can 
steal unawares on the camp ; or such a situation of the 
camp that it can be suddenly flooded from a river." 
Castra stativa, or stations which were intended for pro- 
longed occupation, were generally placed on lower ground 



THE ROMAN OCCUPATION OF BRITAIN 127 

and in the vicinity of water. When fully developed, this 
kind of camp was called legionary, and an example of the 
kind at Caistor in Northamptonshire (which indeed derives 
its name from this castra) is an oblong, 1349 feet in length 
and 1 1 20 in breadth, and covers about 33 acres of ground. 
In such a camp, the gate facing the enemy was called the 
Porta Praetoria, and from it led a straight wide path, the Via 
Principalis, to the gruma, or measuring point, behind which 
was situated the Praetorium. On this were the altar for 
public sacrifices, the Auguratorium, where the auspices 
were consulted, and the Tribunal, from which the troops 
were harangued. A second Via Principalis cut the first at 
right angles and led from the Porta Principalis of one side 
to that of the other. The gate at the opposite side to the 
Praetorian, and therefore furthest from the enemy, was called 
Porta Decumana. In the interior, the positions of the leader 
and his staff, of the various troops and of the workshops, 
were marked out with that precision so characteristic of the 
military genius of the Romans. 

Even the most perfect form of camp, however, was more 
or less of a temporary expedient, and often the castra stativa 
proved to be the forerunner of the later walled city. " A 
Roman camp was ' a city in arms,' and most of the British 
towns grew out of the stationary quarters of the soldiery. 
The ramparts and pathways developed into walls and streets, 
the square of the tribunal into the market-place, and every 
gateway was the beginning of a suburb, where straggling 
rows of shops, temples, rose-gardens, and cemeteries, were 
sheltered from all danger by the presence of a permanent 
garrison. In course of time the important positions were 
surrounded with lofty walls, protected by turrets set apart at 
the distance of a bowshot, and built of such solid strength 
as to resist the shock of a battering-ram. In the centre of 
the town stood a gioup of public buildings, containing the 
courthouse, baths and barracks, and it seems likely that 



128 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

every important place had a theatre or a circus for races 
and shows. The humble beginnings of our cities are seen 
in the ancient sketch of a visit to central Britain, in which 
a poet (Statius) pictured the arrival of the son of a former 
governor, and imagined a white-haired old man pointing 
out the changes of the province. ' Here your father,' he 
says, ' sat in judgment, and on that bank he stood and 
addressed his troops. Those watch-towers and distant 
forts are his, and these walls were built and entrenched by 
him. This trophy of arms he offered to the gods of war, 
with the inscription that you still may see ; that cuirass he 
donned at the call to arms ; this corselet he tore from the 
body of a British king." (Elton.) In some instances their 
situations were not identical, as in the case of the quadri- 
lateral Roman camp, locally called Poundbury, situated 
on a hill a little distance north of Dorchester, which was 
the parent of the Roman Durnovaria, on whose remains 
Dorchester stands. But here the alteration in position was 
probably due to the greater proximity of the second site to 
the water supply. In other cases, the town grew up 
actually inside the earthworks, which may, as at Wareham, 
though altered, persist to the present day. Where the 
walled city was built from the commencement as such, and 
of set plan, or where it grew out of a legionary camp, it was 
constructed of a quadrilateral shape, as may be seen at 
Dorchester (where avenues of trees mark out the foundations 
of the walls), and was provided with a gate at each side. 
In such towns two main streets ran at right angles to one 
another so as to connect the gates of opposite sides, and 
where they intersected they formed the cross, which we find 
in the centre of towns like Gloucester, Worcester and Dor- 
chester. But in other cases the city grew up first, and 
when it became advisable subsequently to provide it with 
walls, they had to accommodate themselves to the shape of 
the collection of houses and could not assume a rectangular 



THE ROMAN OCCUPATION OF BRITAIN 129 

form. Such is the case at Silchester, where we have 
perhaps the most perfect example of a Roman city wall in 
England. When the Roman troops were withdrawn from 
this country there existed in it fifty walled towns, not count- 
ing the stations placed along the course of the more 
important roads. Of these, twenty-eight deserved to rank 
as cities, two of them, Eburacum (York) and Verulamium 
(St. Albans), belonging to the highest class or municipia, 
and nine to the second or colonia. It may perhaps be 
interesting to give the names of the colonia, one of which 
has long since out-topped not merely its fellows but also 
the two municipia in importance. They were Glevum 
(Gloucester), Lindum (Lincoln), Deva (Chester), Camulo- 
dunum (Colchester), Londinium (London), Rutupise (Rich- 
borough, the port of prime importance at that time), Aquae 
Sulis (Bath), Isca Silurum (Caerleon-on-Usk), and Cambo- 
ritum (close to Cambridge). 

The reader will perhaps obtain a more clear idea of the 
construction and contents of a Roman city if a few 
examples are first described, and then the most salient 
features common to all are separately dealt with. The 
remarkable remains of Silchester, which might, were money 
forthcoming, be made into an English Pompeii, are situ- 
ated a short distance from Reading, close to the village of 
Mortimer Fielding. Nearly the whole of the wall is present 
and in a wonderfully perfect condition, its extent being i|- 
miles. It is composed largely of flint, mixed, however, 
with other stones, and is intersected with bonding courses, 
not, as in all other walls in England of the same period, 
made of brick, but of flat slabs of stone. It is from 15 
to 21 feet in height, from 9 to 15 feet in thickness, and 
is strengthened by buttresses placed against its inner face. 
It has the usual four gateways, and in addition, a smaller 
exit directly opposite the amphitheatre, which is, as cus- 
tomary, placed outside the walls. Beyond the walls, and 



i 3 o LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

at some small distance from them, is a fosse, which is 
100 feet in width and from 12 to 14 feet in depth, 
and still in places is filled with water. This city contained, 
besides a number of residences, a forum forming a 
parallelogram 276 by 313 feet, which was surrounded by 



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Fig. 44— Plan of Silchester, showing the walls and some of the 
objects of interest. N, S, W, E, the principal gates ; a, Small 
gate leading to b, amphitheatre ; c, forum ; d, basilica ; e, site 
of Roman Christian basilica ; f, site of circular temple ; g, 
" Cavalry barracks " ; h, baths ; j, modern church ; K, K, in- 
trenchments ; L, L, L, remains ot Fosse ; m m, Villas ; n, 
Hypocaust. 



an ambulatory from 12 to 15 feet in width. Along its 
northern side was a row of shops, amongst which have been 
identified those of a wine merchant, a fish-seller, from 
whom were bought some at least of the oysters whose 
shells litter the remains of Silchester so profusely, a butcher, 
whose steel-yards and flesh-hooks have been found, a 
poulterer, in whose shop were some of the steel spurs used 
for arming game-cocks for a fight, and a jeweller. Attached 



THE ROMAN OCCUPATION OF BRITAIN 131 

was also a hall for the use of merchants, which measured 
30 by 60 feet. There was an apsidal basilica 276 by 60 feet, 
with a gallery on one side, and a central nave sustained by 
two rows of pillars with Corinthian capitals. Around it were 
a series of smaller rooms, in one of which was found the 
eagle or standard of a legion, a unique discovery so far as 
this island is concerned. There have also been identified 
one or more temples, the usual baths, and a Christian church. 
A further range of buildings may have been cavalry barracks. 
To all these objects further attention will be paid in the 
next chapter. 

Uriconium, the modern Wroxeter, situated at the foot 
of the Wrekin, in Shropshire, must also have been a place 
of great importance. "The town," says Mr. Green, "was 
strongly placed at the foot of the Wrekin, not far from the 
bank of the Severn, and was of great extent. Its walls 
enclosed a space more than double that of Roman London, 
while the remains of its forum, its theatre and its amphi- 
theatre, as well as the broad streets which contrast so 
strangely with the narrow alleys of other British towns, 
show its wealth and importance. With its storm by the 
West Saxons the very existence of the city came to an end. 
Its ruins show that the place was plundered and burned, 
while the bones which lie scattered among them tell their 
tale of the flight and massacre of its inhabitants, of women 
and children hewn down in the streets, and wretched 
fugitives stifled in the hypocausts whither they had fled 
with their little hoards for shelter. A British poet sings 
piteously, in verses still left to us, the death-song of 
Uriconium, 'the white town in the valley,' the town of 
white stones gleaming amongst the green woodlands. The 
torch of the foe had left it, when he sang, a heap of black- 
ened ruins, where the singer wandered through halls he had 
known in happier days, the halls of its chief Kyndylan, 
'without fire, without light, without song,' their stillness 



132 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

broken only by the eagle's scream, the eagle 'who has 
swallowed fresh drink, heart's blood of Kyndylan the fair.' 
Of this great city even less remains above ground than of 
Silchester, the most prominent portion being a bit of the 
city wall, long known in the district as the ' Old Works.' " 

This fine fragment is about twenty feet in height and 
seventy-two in length. Like other Roman walls it is 
erected upon a good foundation, on which are laid one or 
two set-off courses of stone. Upon this is placed a series 
of courses of shaped stones, then a string or bonding 
course of flat tiles, then more stones, another course of 
tiles and so on. In fact this alternation of tile and stone is 
characteristic of Roman walls in this country, that fine 
fragment, recently threatened with destruction by a railway 
company, the Jewry Wall, a portion of the fortifications of 
Ratse, the Roman Leicester, having no less than sixteen 
alternations of stone and tile. In some cases instead of the 
courses of tiles having been laid flat, they have been placed 
in a herring-bone manner. Outside the area of the wall in 
places can be seen the remains of the fosse and ramparts 
with which it was surrounded. As has been mentioned in 
another chapter, the ruins of Uriconium, after its sack and 
burning, were used as a stone quarry for the building 
operations of later ages. The pillars of the gateway lead- 
ing into the churchyard are topped with capitals which once 
surmounted the pillars of some edifice in the Roman city, 
whilst another pillar, hollowed out internally, forms the 
font. Its stones are found not merely at Wroxeter and at 
Atcham in the walls of the Norman churches of those two 
places, but are said to have been used in great numbers in 
the construction of the Abbey of Lilleshall. 

It is not, therefore, surprising that there should not be 
much of Uriconium left above ground. Our knowledge of 
what it was is gained from the excavations which have been 
undertaken there from time to time, but as nearly all the 



THE ROMAN OCCUPATION OF BRITAIN 



133 




i 3 4 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

places which have been disclosed have been covered up 
again, in order that the land may be used for agricultural 
purposes, the visitor will be disappointed if he expects to 
see any number of the objects described as existing at 
Uriconium by the books dealing with it. In fact, he will 
learn more as to the habits of the citizens of Uriconium by 
visiting the museum in Shrewsbury, where are collected 
many of the objects which have been found from time to 
time, than he can from the few relics to be seen at Wroxeter. 
In the course of the excavations were exposed the usual 
basilica and baths, together with shops, one of which, 
apparently the property of a worker in glass or metal, or of 
an enameller, possessed a furnace or forge, built of red 
clay, the interior surface of which had been completely 
vitrified by the intense heat to which it had been exposed. 
Four or five feet from it stood a curious roughly-formed 
grey stone, circular in shape and with a flat top, which 
may have been used for a work-table. The villas, here 
as elsewhere, had been warmed by a heating apparatus 
under the floors of the rooms, called a hypocaust, which 
will be more fully described in the next chapter. In one of 
the hypocausts were found the remains of three of the 
inhabitants, referred to in the passage quoted above. One 
of these skeletons was that of a woman, another, that of a 
very old man, was found in a crouching position in one 
corner of the low chamber into which he had crept, with 
his savings, for near his remains was found a heap consist- 
ing of 132 coins and a few nails, the latter being the 
only remnants of the wooden box in which the money had 
lain. The third skeleton, like that of the first, was a 
woman. No doubt when the sack of the town took place 
these three wretches crawled into the hypocaust by the 
narrow passage through which the flames and heat entered, 
in the hope that they might escape the notice of their 
barbarian foes. But whilst hiding there they must have 



THE ROMAN OCCUPATION OF BRITAIN 135 

been stifled, either by the hot air and smoke belonging to 
the hypocaust, or by the conflagration in which the city 
itself perished. 

Corinium, the modern Cirencester, was probably built on 
the site of a British camp, and was surrounded by walls, 
fifteen feet in height and two miles in circuit, which en- 
closed a parallelogram. It was placed at the junction of 
several important roads, as the Fosse ran through it, also 
another great highway called the Ermine Street (not, of 
course, that mentioned earlier in this chapter), whilst, finally, 
another road which led to Bath and received in Saxon times 
the significant name of Akeman Street,* from the condition 
of the gouty sufferers who travelled along it, also traversed 
the city. 

It was the chief town of the Cotswold district, a district 
distinguished above all other parts of England by the 
number, size and magnificence of its villas, and is said 
to have been occupied by. Ostorius Scapula prior to his 
campaign against Caratacos. One may gather from the 
words of Stukeley not merely what extensive remains there 
were in existence at his day, but also how it is that so many 
of them both there and elsewhere are no more to be seen. 
" Here/' he says, " are found many mosaic pavements, 
rings, intaglios, and coins innumerable, especially in one 
great garden, called Lewis Grounds. I suppose it was the 
Praetorium. Large quantities of carved stones are carried 
off yearly in carts, to mend the highways, besides what are 
useful in building. In the same place they found several 
stones of the shafts of pillars, 6 ft. long, and bases of 
stone (as the tenant expressed himself) near as big in com- 
pass as his summer-house adjoining ; these, with cornices, 
very handsomely moulded, and carved with modillions and 

* It is right to say that this etymology has been objected to by 
some who find in the word Aqua (water) the derivation of the first 
syllable of the name, 



136 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

the like ornaments, were converted into swine troughs. 
Some of the stones of the bases were fastened together with 
cramps of iron, so that they were forced to employ horses to 
draw them asunder. Capitals of these pillars were likewise 
found." 

Like the villas in the district to which it belonged, the 
houses of Corinium were notable for the beauty and diversity 
of their tesselated pavements, of many of which we fortu- 
nately possess full details, which will be dealt with in the 
next chapter. Here have also been found funeral monu- 
ments and other inscriptions, some on the walls of houses. 
Outside the wall of the city was an amphitheatre. 

It would be tedious to give further accounts of the 
general details of the Roman towns in Britain, but what has 
been said will show how immeasurably civilisation had 
advanced upon the lake villages of the previous era, lake 
villages which, be it remembered, were still existing in 
England, side by side with, and only partially influenced by, 
the culture of the cities which we have been considering. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE ROMAN OCCUPATION OF BRITAIN 

— continued 

The Roman city — Cemetery — Pomoerium — Amphitheatre 
— Gates — Forum and Basilica — Shops — Baths — Temples — 
Christian Church — Barracks. 



The outlines afforded in the last chapter of the Romano 

British cities must now be filled in 

by a more complete description of 

some of the prominent objects found 

in or near them. This may perhaps 

best be effected by taking them in 

the order in which they would 

naturally be met with by a stranger 

visiting a city for the first time. 

Approaching by one of the great 

roads, the attention of the traveller 

would probably first be attracted by 

the numerous tombstones which he 

would see by its side, setting forth 

the names, ages and conditions of 

those who were interred beneath. 

These would, in the great majority 

of cases, as is natural, having regard 

to the condition of the country, be 

* The inscription may be thus translated: " Rufus Sita, of the 
sixth cohort of the Thracians, forty years of age, served twenty-two 




RVFVS-S1TAEWES-CH0VI 
7FWCVNVANNXLST1PXXII 
HEREDES-EXSTESTF-CVRMIEJ 
H S/\E 






Fig. 46. — Roman Tomb- 
stone from Uriconium. 

(Wright.)* 



i38 



LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 



either soldiers or their relatives. Some of these are adorned 
with carvings like that on which a Roman soldier on horse- 
back is represented as bestriding his prostrate British foe. 
A few instances out of the many which have been collected 
must suffice. 

(i) A military tombstone from Uriconium. The original 
inscription is on the left, the full Latin in the centre, and 
the translation on the right. 



M. PETRONIUS 


Marcus Petronius, 


Marcus Petronius, 


LF. MEN 


Lucii films Menenia, 


son of Lucius, of the Men- 


VIC. ANN 


Vicsit annis 


enian tribe, lived 38 


XXXVIII 


xxxviii 


years, 


MIL. LEG 


miles legionis 


a soldier of the fourteenth 


XIII. GEM 


xiii gemmae , 


legion, called Gemina ; he 


MILITAVIT 


militavit 


served as a soldier 


ANN. XVIII 


annis xviii, 


eighteen years, 


SIGN. FVIT 


Signifer fuit. 


and was a standard-bearer. 


H. S. E. 


Hie situs est. 


He lies here. 



(ii) The next instance is that of a family tombstone from 
the same place, which was intended originally to commemo- 
rate three persons, being divided into three compartments, 
but for some reason the third, which was probably intended 
to bear the name of the husband and brother (?) of those 
to whom the first two sections belong, has remained unfilled 
up. In the first compartment appears : 



D. M. 


Diis Manibus. 


To the Gods of the Shades. 


PLACIDA 


Placida 


Placida 


AN. LV. 


Annorum lv. , 


aged fifty-five years, 


CUR. AG 


Curam agente 


erected by the care of 


CONI. A 


Conjuge annorum 


him who was her husband 


XXX 


XXX. 


for thirty years. 



years in the ranks. His heirs have caused this monument to be 
erected in accordance with the instructions of his will. He is buried 
here." 



THE ROMAN OCCUPATION OF BRITAIN 139 
In the second : 



D. M. 


Diis Manibus. 


To the Gods of the Shades. 


DEVCCV 


Deuccu 


Deuccus 


S. AN. XV 


s, annorum xv. 


aged fifteen years ; 


CVR. AG 


curam agente 


erected by the care of 


FRATRE. 


fratre. 


his brother. 



(iii) One final instance may be given of an inscription on 
the coffin of a child, discovered near Holdgate in Yorkshire : 

d. m. simplici^e. Florentine To the Gods of the Shades of Sim- 

anime innocentissime plicia Florentina, a most innocent 

que. vixit menses decem soul, who lived ten months. 

felicius. simplex, pater fecit Felicius Simplex, her father, of the 

leg. vi. v. Sixth legion, the Victorious, made 

this. 

Approaching still nearer the city the pomcerium would 
appear, an open space outside the walls which might not be 
built upon. Mr. Gomme thinks that in the name of the 
parish of St. Martin's Pomeroy, London, we have a relic of 
the pomcerium of Londinium, just as the "pummery,"an 
open space outside Dorchester, may be that of Durnovaria. 

Before entering the city, the amphitheatre would also be 
visited, and of these open-air places of amusement we have 
several good examples in this country, that near Dorchester, 
known as Maumbury, being the finest. This is an oval 
earthwork, enclosing a space 218 ft. in length and 163 ft. in 
width, and has been constructed by excavating the chalk 
and heaping it up into a rampart 30 ft. high. This rampart 
is interrupted by two openings at its opposite ends, by which 
entrance was gained to the interior. It rises gradually to 
attain its maximum height midway between the openings, 
and was no doubt once arranged in tiers to accommodate 
the rows of spectators. In much later days, in fact, in the 
last century, it was used as the public place of execution, 
and it is calculated that ten thousand persons have been 
present in it on such occasions. Another amphitheatre is 



140 



LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 



situated near Cirencester, in which the bank, 20 ft. in 
height, encloses a space 148 ft. by 134 ft. Few vestiges of 
the seats remain here, though, if we may trust the account 
of earlier writers, they must have been much more distinct 
in comparatively recent times. An amphitheatre outside 
the walls of Caerleon-on-Usk goes by the name of King 
Arthur's Round Table, and, as we have seen, there is a 
fourth outside Silchester. The amphitheatre inspected, the 



^L<iv^> 




Fig. 47. — Roman Gate at Lindum (Lincoln). (Wright.) The 
figure is reversed, the smaller arch being really to the right of 
the large one. 



traveller would next approach the wall, the general structure 
of which has already been sufficiently described, and enter 
the city by one of its gates. At Lincoln one of the smaller 
entrances to the city of Lindum Colonia still remains, and 
is called the Newport Arch. The original design of this 
gateway no doubt consisted of a large central archway, with 
two smaller posterns, one on either side, but of the latter, 
one has completely disappeared. The main arch consists 
of twenty-six huge wedge-shaped blocks of stone without 
any regular keystone, and is 16 ft. in diameter. Passing 



THE ROMAN OCCUPATION OF BRITAIN 141 

through the gateway and following one of the main streets 
to the centre of the city, the forum and basilica would be 
reached. The reader can form a good idea of what these 
important buildings were like from the following account of 
those of Silchester, given by Mr. Joyce. The forum pre- 
sented a straight line of unbroken wall, without a projection, 




Fig. 48. — Plan of Forum (the square enclosure) and Basilica (the 
oblong enclosure to the left) at Silchester. The former is 
separated by an ambulatory from rows of shops and offices, 
and the latter has a lateral apsidal recess and two apsidal 
tribunes. (After a plan in the Archceologia. ) 



having one entrance at some hundred feet from its western 
termination. Between the entrance and that western end 
rose the basilica, towering over all the other buildings, and 
over the forum itself. Against this wall of the basilica, 
close to the intersection of the two great viae, was an in- 
scription in honour of the local god, the Segontian Hercules. 
The forum proper was, therefore,, on the left hand at 



142 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

entering by this northern doorway, and the basilica and 
council-chambers on the right. Confining ourselves first 
to the forum, properly so called, and excluding for the 
present any other buildings which lie within its plan, the 
visitor, immediately upon passing through the entrance, 
would have found himself standing in an ambulatory, which 
stretched away to his left hand, and might be followed, 
without a break, completely round three sides of the entire 
edifice, making the circuit until it arrived on the southern 
side, at an exit corresponding to the doorway on the north ; 
any one walking along it, however, must pass by the great 
entrance, which was at the centre of the eastern side. The 
range of the shops extended the whole way along the inner 
part of this ambulatory, forming a sort of bazaar, except on 
the south side, where the rooms were larger, and had other 
uses. Within the range of shops, again, was a second line 
of ambulatories, enclosing on three sides the great central 
court or quadrangle of the forum. The general plan may, 
therefore, be described as a rectangular court, encompassed 
round three of its sides by symmetrical ranges of not very 
lofty buildings, which contained a double row of ambula- 
tories, having between their lines a series of chambers, used 
for shops or for public business. The fourth side of the 
central court was formed by the side wall of the basilica, 
which extended its whole length. The range of rooms lying 
between the double range of ambulatories, on the south 
side, was not used for shops, but for the offices of the public 
departments, to which there would be perpetual resort out 
of the forum. These rooms are more stately in size, and 
were probably loftier than the shops ; they also are only 
five in number, and are distinguished, by their arrangement, 
as a group constructed for an especial purpose. 

The central and the two end rooms (all alike in size) are 
rectangular, but those on each side of the central room have 
semi-circular ends, implying that they were built for the 



THE ROMAN OCCUPATION OF BRITAIN 143 

reception of boards or committees, with a president and 
assessors. In this group of public offices the business of 
the redile, quaestor, and the revenue was carried on. The 
inner ambulatories at each side opened into the basilica, 
and there was most likely also an entrance to it from the 
central court. Passing now, therefore, out of the forum 
proper into the basilica, the first particular which at once 
arrests the attention is its magnitude. Including the two 
tribunals, which face each other at the extreme ends, this 
basilica extended entirely across the forum. 

Its total length consequently, measuring from the outside 
of its north end to the outside of its south end, was not less 
than 276 ft.; or, omitting the tribunals altogether, the 
central space was about 230 ft. long by 60 ft. wide. This, 
however, by no means fills up the plan between the 
wide party wall next the forum and the west exterior wall. 
All along the whole west side of the basilica were spacious 
chambers (to certain of which uses have been assigned from 
the articles found within them), that at the centre being un- 
equivocally the curia, or principal hall of council. This 
latter was quite open to the basilica along its entire front, 
was always a lofty room, and at Silchester was ascended by 
two steps ; the back of it was formed by a wide shallow semi- 
circle, so as to accommodate a large council board, and it 
was lined with a dado of white Italian marble sawn in thin 
slabs, and secured by small iron clamps. The largest room, 
however, along this range was a great apartment, 60 ft. 
long, which occupied the northern end, and to which, from 
the connection Vitruvius mentions between merchants and 
basilicas, the name of the Hall of Merchants has been 
assigned. It must not be forgotten that of the spacious 
chambers nothing remains but the outline of their several 
floors. To revert to the great basilica itself, it might with 
propriety be described as consisting really of two courts, 
placed end to end. No septum or division, nor any indica- 



144 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

tion whatever of one, has been discovered, but the dimen- 
sions (that is to say, the length as compared with the 
breadth) almost indicate that such was the purpose of 
its original designer. A Roman basilica was Jbuilt upon 
such a plan that, its iiave or central area (which was very 
lofty) had on either hand an aisle in two stories. The 
lower story of the aisle was formed by a colonnade of large 
pillars, and the upper by a gallery behiridCa parapet, having 
along its front a range of smaller pillar s, ;; which stood 
symmetrically over the large ones. The colonnade below 
had thus to support an enormous weight, and it was usual to 
give strength and firmness to the bases of the columns 
by placing them upon a massive substructural wall, which 
wall, built beneath the floor of the basilica, kept all the 
columns true to the level, and greatly aided them to bear 
the superincumbent pressure without sinking. At Silchester 
nave and aisles are obliterated, the splendid colonnade 
is represented by a few blocks of weather-worn shafts and 
by some fragments of well-wrought capitals ; but the massive 
substructural wall on one side of the basilica, which sup- 
ported its long range of pillars, remains embedded still in 
the ground, and is no less than 5 ft. wide. Of the 
corresponding wall, upon the oppposite side of the centre, 
not the slightest vestige has been recovered, though care- 
fully sought for. 

Portions of shafts of two sizes (as might be expected) lay 
about among the debris in the centre. The diameter of 
the largest was 3 ft., that of the smaller, 1 ft. 10 in. 
Parts of two bases have also been met with, one of them 
having the torus mouldings fairly marked still, but both 
being more or less defaced. Fragments of capitals of 
a very enriched style and excellent workmanship have 
also been discovered, but unfortunately no pieces of sculp- 
ture and only a few fragments of inscriptions have come 
to light. Much curious ironwork has been from time 



THE ROMAN OCCUPATION OF BRITAIN 145 

to time found in the forum, amongst other things, the keys 
of the shops in the ambulatories, the styli with which the 
tradesmen kept their accounts, door-hinges (one especially, 
which appears to be made to keep a door closed by a 
spring at the back), snap-lock bolts, rings in pairs for the 
handles of double doors, nails of every size and shape. A 
small iron axe, knife-blades of various sizes, the hooks of 
the butchers' steel-yards found in the shops of the butchers, 
and the blade of an oyster-knife in the fishmonger's. 
The bronze articles consist principally of fibulae of various 
patterns — small armlets, pieces of a chain-bracelet with a 




Fig. 49. — Roman Pottery from 

Castor (Durobrivoe). 

(Wright.) 



Fig. 50. — Roman Pottery 

from Upchurch. 

(Wright. ) 



snap, some playthings, such as a toy-anchor and tiny game- 
cock, a quaint little long-legged horse, meant apparently to 
rock by balancing on a small sphere of metal (though none 
now exists), a tiny axe (probably one of a set of pendent 
ornaments), a scale-bottom, some very small hand-bells, 
toilette implements and studs of curiously modern shape. 
Besides the shops incidentally mentioned here in the last 
chapter, the visitor would probably find one or more 
devoted to the sale of the various fictile wares made or im- 
ported by the Romans. Of pottery, two kinds appear to 
have been made in this country, that of Upchurch on the 

K 



146 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

Medway, which was of a blue-black colour and hard in 
texture, and that called Durobrivian, from its place of 
manufacture (Durobrivse, or Castor in Northamptonshire). 
This was of a superior character to the other ware, being 
better designed and often ornamented in white relief with 
hunting scenes and other groups of figures or animals. 
Its colour was generally bluish or slaty, though vases of 
a dark copper hue have also been found. The potteries of 
this district must have been very numerous, since they are 
said to have extended for twenty miles along the river Nen, 




Fig. 51.— Samian Pottery. (Wright.) 

and to have employed at least 2000 men. A still more 
beautiful form of pottery found in quantities in Britain was 
the Samian ware. This does not appear to have been 
made in this country but was imported from abroad, is of a 
fine red colour and has a highly polished surface. It was 
evidently much valued by its possessors, for we find pieces 
which have been accidentally broken and afterwards 
mended with rivets, just as a valuable piece of porcelain 
might be treated to-day. This ware is ornamented with 
raised patterns representing trees, animals, hunting and 
mythological scenes. 

Of one or other of these kinds of pottery the most varied 



THE ROMAN OCCUPATION OF BRITAIN 147 

articles might be purchased, from a baby's bottle, for such an 
article has been found at Colchester, to large and beautiful 
bowls and dishes. Terra-cotta statuettes manufactured at 
Richborough, glass cups, bowls and beads, would perhaps 
have been found in the same shop. Another store which 
the traveller might visit was that of the local apothecary. 
The elaborate surgical instruments, some of them so 
strikingly like those still in use, which have been discovered 
at Pompeii, have not as yet been met with in Britain, though 
a surgical lancet has been found at Uriconium. At several 
places, however, stamps have been found which were used 
by oculists to mark the wax on the tops of their pots of 




Fig. 52. — Oculist's Stamp. The inscription is for an ointment — 
" Ad Cicatrices et Aspritudines " — for scars and roughnesses. 
(Scot. Ant. Mus.) 



ointment. One of these, discovered also at Uriconium, 
betrays the same touching belief in the efficacy of his 
remedy to cure all ills that marks the patent medicine man 
of our own time. It is circular and bears an inscription, 
which, translated reads : " The dialibanum (or eye-salve) of 
Tiberius Claudius, the physician, for all complaints of the 
eyes, to be used with eggs." 

Another found at Bath belonged to a physician called Titus 
Junianus, and bore a different inscription on each of its four 
sides, so as to be used for the stamping of pots of ointment 
of various qualities. The first of these seems to have been 
employed in cases of cataract, the second is a cerusomae- 



148 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

linum, or golden ointment, the third probably an astringent 
eye lotion made of galls or some part of the oak, and the 
fourth is more doubtful in its meaning, but is said to be 
" delicta a medicis," or as we should now put it, "recom- 
mended by the faculty." 

Passing to another part of the city the visitor would 
probably be anxious to inspect the baths, so essential a 
feature of every Roman town. So devoted were the 
Romans to their baths that il is said that there were at 
one time as many as 850 of these establishments in the 
city of Rome, and that some of them were capable of 
accommodating several thousand bathers. The Roman 
bath closely resembled the Turkish bath of to-day, which 
is indeed its lineal descendant. The arrangement of such 
a bath is sufficiently well known to render any descrip- 
tion of its ancient representative unnecessary, so that it will 
suffice to say that in addition to the processes with which 
we are familiar the bather was oiled all over in the apody- 
terium, a large chamber where he left his clothes, and that 
an additional room, called the sphaeristerium, was provided 
in which games were played and athletic exercises performed. 
One of the most celebrated of the Romano-British baths is 
that at Bath, a place long noted for its constant supply of 
hot water, charged with salts of great benefit in gouty 
ailments. The Britons, who appear to have known these 
waters before the coming of the Romans, had placed them 
under the patronage of one of their goddesses named Sul. 
This personage was equated by the Romans with Minerva, 
and altars dedicated to the goddess under the double name, 
" Dese Suliminervae," have been found at Bath. Large 
portions of the Roman baths have been uncovered, 
including an oblong bath with steps leading down into it, 
on which the bathers could sit, which measured &$ ft. by 
30 ft., and a circular bath 25 ft. in diameter. At Silchester 
extensive baths have also been exposed, no less than sixteen 



THE ROMAN OCCUPATION OF BRITAIN 149 




150 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

chambers having been laid bare. Amongst these are the 
prsefurnium, or furnace, where the heat for the sweating- 
rooms and water was obtained, chambers with hypocausts 
beneath them, a large apodyterium, and a swimming-bath. 
The modern visitor to any town cannot be said to have fully 
explored it until he has seen its principal churches, and our 
traveller would find numerous temples in any city which he 
visited, though few traces of such now exist. We know, 
however, from history that there was a temple to Claudius 
at Camulodunum (Colchester), and an inscription com- 
memorates the building of another to Neptune and Minerva 
at Regnum (Chichester). The remains of a temple to 
Suliminerva at Bath are of a debased Corinthian style of 
architecture, and others have been discovered at Caerleon, 
Silchester and elsewhere. Various inscriptions which have 
been discovered tell us of the foundation or restoration of 
temples which have now disappeared. Besides this there 
are numerous altars with inscriptions dedicating them to 
Roman or British divinities, such as that discovered at 
Tarraby on the Roman wall, the inscription of which when 
translated reads : " The second sacred Augustan Legion, 
under the charge of ^Elianus, Commander-in-Chief of the 
Second Legion, Oppius Felix being his Deputy Lieutenant, 
dedicate this altar to Mars, the great local Deity ; and took 
care to have it set up." Two others found at Chester are 
dedicated respectively to " Nymphis et Fontibus " (the 
nymphs and fountains) and " Genio loci " (the genius of the 
place). Perhaps one of the most interesting buildings, 
however, of a religious character, is the early Christian 
basilica recently discovered at Silchester. This small 
edifice stood east and west, and consisted of a central 
portion 29 \ ft. long and 10 ft. wide, with a semicircular 
apse at the west end. North and south of this were two 
narrow aisles only 5 ft. wide, terminating westwards in some- 
what wider chambers or quasi-transepts ; the northern of these 



THE ROMAN OCCUPATION OF BRITAIN 151 

was cut off from the aisle by a thin partition wall. The 
eastern end of the building was covered by a porch, extend- 
ing the whole width of the three main divisions. The 
central division retains considerable portions of its floor of 
coarse red-tile tessarae, or cubes, with, just in front of the 
apse, a panel 5 ft. square of finer mosaic. The design 
of this panel consists mainly of four squares filled with 
black and white checkers, around which is a border of red 
and black tessarae with an outer edging of white. " It is 
generally assumed," says the account by Mr. St. John Hope, 
from which the above facts have been extracted, " that in a 
church like this, with the altar at the west end instead of 
the east,* the celebrant stood during Mass behind the altar 
and facing eastwards, this eastward position being the 
essential thing, and not the position of the altar in the 
building. The clergy were arranged in a semicircle around 
the apse, behind the celebrant, and the deacons stood in 
front and on either side. The choir of singers occupied the 
western part of the nave. 

" The state here of the red tesselation of the nave and apse 
raises, however, some unexpected difficulties. In the first 
place, there is so little room between the mosaic panel and 
the apse wall that there cannot have been any seat here for 
the clergy. In the next place, the floor of the apse, which 
extends right up to the wall, not only shows no signs of wear, 
but the edges of the tessarae are so sharp that it is quite 
certain that they cannot have been walked upon for even a 
very short period. The mosaic panel is also not worn at 
all. East of the panel, on the other hand, the red tessarae 
are considerably worn, and those on each side also show 

* There can be no reasonable doubt that the altar stood upon 
the panel of fine mosaic in front of the apse, and that it was at first 
a wooden table. Some small patches of pink cement upon the 
surface of the mosaic seem, however, to show that the wooden altar 
was replaced at a later time by a more substantial one in stone or 
marble. 



152 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

signs of wear. The eastern position of the celebrant was so 
universally the custom of the Church that the floor ought 
certainly to show traces of wear on the west side of the 
altar, but this it does not, and the conclusion therefore 
seems inevitable that the apse floor had been relaid just 
before the destruction of the building (which is unlikely), or 
that the tessarse were effectually protected by being con- 
stantly covered by a mat or carpet. 

" To the east of the church is a tile foundation about 4 ft. 
square. This is clearly the place of the labrum, or laver, in 
which the faithful used to wash their hands and faces before 
entering the church, and the shallow pit in front was pro- 
bably covered by a pierced stone, and served to carry off 
the waste water. The water itself could • be obtained from 
the well west of the church, to which, as there are no other 
buildings near, it seems to have belonged." 

It is probable that in many of the cities the traveller 
might have found a theatre, but only in one, Verulamium, 
or St. Albans, have any remains of. such a building been dis- 
covered. This theatre was a little over 190 ft. in diameter. 
Its two outer walls were on the plan of a Greek theatre, 
comprising 240 degrees of a circle, and between them 
was a corridor 9 ft. wide. This was not continuous all 
round, but was interrupted by stairs and walls. The stage 
was 46 ft. long and 8 ft. 9 in. deep. At its east side was 
a room with a coarse tesselated pavement, which was set 
apart for the players — in fact, the green room. The walls 
were painted in fresco after the manner customary to such 
buildings, and when discovered the colours were quite 
fresh. 

In Silchester a range of buildings has been discovered, 
which has been conjecturally called the cavalry barracks. 
Whether such was its real purpose or not, there can be no 
doubt that these large cities must have been provided with 
accommodation for the soldiers stationed in them. From 



THE ROMAN OCCUPATION OF BRITAIN 153 




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154 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

the inscriptions on tombstones and altars, to which allusion 
has already been made, and from the marks on tiles and, in 
the case of the Roman Wall, on the stone quarries, whence 
they obtained their building materials, a very good idea can 
be formed of the position of the various legions whose head- 
quarters were situated in this country. Each of these legions 
had, like many modern regiments, a sub-title, besides the 
number which it officially bore. Thus the sixth legion was 
called, " Victrix " and the second "Augusta." The head- 
quarters of the former was at York, of the latter at Caerleon, 
and of the twentieth, whose title was Victoria Victrix, or 
Valens Victrix, at Chester. 

There would still remain for our traveller, after he had 
seen the various objects of interest mentioned in this chap- 
ter, the group of buildings which constituted the great body 
of the town, the villas or houses of its residents. It will, how- 
ever, be more convenient to describe the private residence 
of a Roman gentleman as it existed in the country, and this 
will form a part of the next chapter, It would not, however, 
be right to leave the city without alluding to the system of 
drains which it possessed. An important work of this kind, 
constructed on a similar model to the Cloaca Maxima at 
Rome, has been found at Colchester. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE ROMAN OCCUPATION OF BRITAIN 

— continued 

The Roman Villa — Hypocausts — Tesselated pavements — 
Chedworth Villa — Mines— Methods of Burial — The Roman 
Wall — Nature of the Roman occupation. 

The villa, in the country especially, during the latter part 
of the Roman occupation of the land, formed an extensive 
series of buildings for the accommodation of some wealthy 
person, his family, servants, and workmen. It consisted, as 
a rule, of three parts, the villa urbana, which contained the 
dining- and sitting-rooms, bed-chambers, baths, and apart- 
ments of the family generally, the villa rustica, for the 
slaves, workmen, and stables, and the villa fructuaria, 
where were the corn and oil stores, barns, granaries, and 
such like necessary offices. 

These buildings usually occupied four sides of a square, 
forming a quadrangle, round the inner faces of which ran a 
verandah, or cryptoporticus, by which access was gained to 
the various rooms, and into which their windows looked. 
Thus the maximum protection from rain and storms was 
obtained. These windows, in Britain at least, were usually 
glazed with sheets of crown or plate glass. In some cases 
ground glass was employed, and there were even instances 
in which windows were composed of coloured glass, alto- 
gether a striking contrast to the inadequate casements of 
Saxon and Norman times. As all traces of these buildings 



156 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

save their floors and the lower parts of their walls have dis- 
appeared, it is impossible to say with absolute certainty 
whether they consisted of more than one story, but as we 
known that the ancient Romans entertained the greatest 
objection to sleeping on the ground floor of a house, there 
can be little doubt that their houses consisted of two, or 
perhaps even of three stories, and that the bed-chambers 
were on the upper floors. It is, however, highly probable 
that these upper stories, and possibly also the upper part of 
the walls of the ground floor, were made of wood, whilst 
only the lower part of the latter was constructed of stone. 
These walls would consist of wooden frames with the inter- 
spaces filled in with " wattle and daub," in fact they would 
closely resemble the old " half-timber houses " of a later 
date, before the interstices of the framing timbers had been 
filled in, as they so often have been, by bricks. The roofs 
were covered perhaps in some cases with the tiles which the 
Romans made in such numbers, but in the south-west of 
England it was customary to use for this purpose small slabs 
of oolite, now called " Stonesfield slates," which were cut into 
a lozenge shape, and drilled with holes so that they might be 
attached to the roof timbers by nails. It is very possible 
that these may also have been fastened on the outsides of 
the walls as a further protection against the weather. The 
rooms were warmed by hypocausts and flue-tiles, a method 
which has been several times alluded to, and must now be 
more fully described. In constructing a room on the 
ground floor, a series of pillars (pilae) were erected, either of 
stones or of bricks, laid on top of one another. On these 
a continuous floor of red tiles was laid down, so that, as in 
some of our modern houses, there was a space some two 
or more feet in depth between the actual floor of the room 
and the subjacent earth. This space was called the hypo- 
caust. On the layer of brick slabs, which was called the 
suspensura, was laid down a stratum, about 6 in. in 



THE ROMAN OCCUPATION OF BRITAIN 157 

thickness, of concrete, formed of pounded bricks and lime, 
which formed the foundation for the actual tesselated floor 
of the room. This consisted of patterns, often of a highly 
complicated nature, formed in a mosaic, composed of cubes 
of stone of various colours, of brick, terra-cotta, and, in rare 
instances, of glass. In Cirencester the materials used were, 
for white, chalk ; for cream colour, hard fine-grained oolite ; 
for grey, the same altered by fire ; for yellow, also oolite ; 




Fig. 55. — Hypocaust at Corinium (Cirencester). (Wright.) One 
of the pike supporting the floor is of stone, the others are of 
tiles. Between the last row and the wall on the left is a row 
of upright flue tiles, and in the wall itself are two apertures 
for conveying the hot air. 



for chocolate, old red sandstone ; for slate-colour and black, 
stone from the lower lias. The various shades of red and 
also black were made of brick or terra-cotta, and in one 
case, the transparent ruby colours of the flowers surrounding 
a head of Flora were composed of pieces of glass. 

Such floors may still be seen in the halls of public and 
even private buildings of modern erection, and they have 
the advantages of being durable, beautiful and easily cleaned. 
A large number of such pavements have been discovered 



158 



LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 



in this country and will be found figured and described in 
Morgan's work on " Romano-British Mosaic Pavements." 
A favourite subject for such a floor was that of Orpheus, 

who is represented in the 
centre of the pavement with 
his lute, surrounded by the 
birds and beasts whom he 
had charmed by its strains. 

A description of one ela- 
borate pavement found at 
Cirencester, and described 
by Buckman and Newmarch, 
must suffice as an example 
of the more ambitious efforts 
of this kind. It consisted 
of nine medallions, each of 
which was nearly 5 ft. in 
diameter ; these were in- 
cluded in an octagonal frame, 
formed of a continuous 
twisted guilloche, in which 
bright red and yellow tessaras 
prevailed. Within all the 
octagons, with the exception 
of the central one, were 
central medallions, surrounded also by the twisted guilloche, 
but with tessarse of a subdued colour, in which olive green 
and white prevailed, this arrangement giving greater brilliancy 
and effect to the pictorial subjects within each circle, which 
was greatly heightened by inner circles of black frets, of 
various kinds, in the different medallions. The central 
medallion was distinguished from the rest by a double 
twisted guilloche circle, in which black, green, ruby red, 
yellow and white were the colours employed. The inter- 
vening spaces, arising from this arrangement, consisted of 




Fig. 56. — Orpheus with his Lute, 
executed in tessarae. Part 
of a Roman pavement at Cir- 
encester. (After a figure in 
the Archceological Journal. ) 



THE ROMAN OCCUPATION OF BRITAIN 159 

square and triangular lozenges, which had plain black frets 
internally. The borders presented the continuation of the 
bright coloured twisted guilloche, forming the whole within 
a square ; then followed a guilloche of a colder tone, which 
was succeeded by the labyrinthine and the triangular black 
frets, finished by a wide border of greyish tessarae, which 
was relieved by a central line of few rows of the white ones. 
The pictorial representations of the medallions formed two 
series, one consisting of groups, the other of heads, symbo- 
lical of the seasons. In the centre is a much mutilated 




Fig. 57. — A Lion executed in tessarae. One of the figures of 
animals around the figure of Orpheus in the Cirencester 
pavement. (After a figure in the Archceological Journal.) 



representation of the Centaur, and the other groups consist 
of Actaeon and his dogs ; Silenus, with his wine-cup, seated 
upon an ass; Bacchus and, probably, his panther. The 
heads are of Flora, Ceres, and Pomona, typifying Spring, 
Summer and Autumn, the fourth head, which no doubt 
represented Winter, having disappeared. Such a floor, 
however beautiful and cleanly, would suffer from the dis- 
advantage of being exceedingly cold, and as the Romans, 
who were natives of a warmer clime, had already enough to 
suffer in this direction, they combated the double effects of 
the climate and of their cold floors by introducing beneath 
the latter in the hypocaust a constant supply of hot air from 



160 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

a prsefurnium, or furnace, the heat and smoke from which 
circulated amongst the pilse and was, in many cases at least, 
carried off through hollow bricks or flue-tiles laid in the 
walls and terminating, as we learn from a mosaic of an 
Algerian house, in chimney-stacks, with pots and cowls like 
those of the present day. Thus not only the floor but the 
walls radiated hot. air and must have maintained an equable 
and comfortable temperature throughout the house. The 
upper rooms would, of course, only be warmed by the 
flue-tiles. As wood was almost exclusively used for 
fuel, there would be but little soot, and thus the difficult 
task of cleaning such exceedingly narrow flues would be 
obviated. 

In towns, at least, as Professor Middleton points out, 
there was a regular water supply, large lead mains being 
laid under the paving of the streets, and rising mains 
branching off right and left to the houses. These led up 
to cisterns on the upper floors, from whence descending 
supply-pipes were laid on to various parts of the house, 
exactly as in our modern system. Air-chambers were often 
introduced to diminish the risk of pipes bursting from the 
hydraulic pressure, the confined air acting as a spring. A 
cubical lead box was usually placed at the point where the 
rising main to the house branched off from the street main ; 
this seems rather a clumsy way of making a junction, but it 
apparently answered its purpose very well. Very neatly- 
made water-cocks and draw-taps of bronze were used, and 
the turncocks in the mains had movable key-handles like 
those now in use. The draw-taps were very like those used 
in Italy, often formed in the shape of an animal's head, with 
handles either fixed, or, more often, movable ; they are 
frequently very graceful in form, and are always very skilfully 
made and fitted so as to avoid leakage. 

The interior of the walls was covered first with a layer of 
plaster, on which was spread a finer composition, on which 



THE ROMAN OCCUPATION OF BRITAIN 161 

again were executed, in fresco, bands or simple patterns in 
various colours. 

It will perhaps be well to give a fairly complete account 
of one villa, which may serve as an example of the dwelling- 




EDQOIH 



pry 



Fig. 58.— Plan of Chedworth Villa. A, Chamber with tesselated 
pavement ; B, bath ; C, sweating chamber ; D, room with 
pike of hypocaust in situ ; E, praefurnium or heating chamber 
of bath ; F, possibly the forge. Here pigs of iron were 
found. The buildings represented in the upper part of the 
figure form the Villa Rustica. 



place of the Roman period, and for this purpose that at 
Chedworth, not far from Cheltenham and amongst the 
Cotswold Hills, may be selected. This villa occupies three 
sides of a square, and so far as has at present been made 
out, did not possess that part known as the Fructuaria. In 
the first part of the Urbana were a series of rooms whose 
tesselated pavements are much mutilated. The larger of 



1 62 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

these rooms has a tesselated pavement representing a dance, 
apparently emblematical of the seasons, as one of the figures, 
which may represent winter, is warmly clad, and carries in 
his arms a hare or rabbit. These were probably the living 
rooms of the house, and next to them was the bath, which 
formed a part of every respectable house, and was modelled 
on those of the city, though of course on a much smaller 
scale. The amount of wear to which the stone step, leading 
out of the hot room, has been subjected, shows the length 
of time during which this villa must have been occupied, 
and the extensive use to which the bath was put. At right 
angles to this group of buildings is a second row, the 
Rustica, containing the rooms of the servants, also provided 
with baths. A small building in the grounds contains a 
pool, which may have been used for the storage of live fish, 
and an altar, and there is a lime-kiln in the immediate 
vicinity. The numerous pigs of iron which have been found 
in this villa seem to show that amongst the offices attached 
to it was a forge, no doubt a very necessary part of a Roman 
provincial's establishment. One of the most interesting 
things about this villa is the discovery which has been 
made, under the foundation stone of the main entrance, 
of the Greek letters x an d p, forming in combination the 
first two letters of the name of Christ. A similar pair of 
letters has been discovered in four other instances in this 
villa, and their occurrence leads to the belief that its 
occupant was a Christian Roman. On this account some 
have surmised that the small building with the pool, already 
alluded to, may have been a baptistery, but it is scarcely 
probable that this is a correct explanation of its purpose. 
In this villa have been found a number of knives, hinges, 
keys, locks and spoons, also a steelyard for weighing. These 
and other objects connected with the villa are placed in a 
small museum on the spot, and all the remains have been 
carefully protected from cold and damp, and preserved in a 



THE ROMAN OCCUPATION OF BRITAIN 163 

manner which may serve as a model for other proprietors of 
Roman antiquities. 

Mention was made some pages back of the leaden water- 
pipes of the Roman cities, and this leads to a mention of the 
mining operations of the Romans, which enabled them to 
procure the lead and other minerals which they used in their 
numerous manufactures. They appear to have mined lead 
extensively in the Mendip Hills, where many traces of their 
operations are visible. Indeed, a pavement, now unfortu- 
nately destroyed, which was apparently inspired by scenes 
of a mining nature, was found at a villa at Pitney in 
Somersetshire. In one of the apartments of this villa was 
a pavement containing, in a square, nine whole-length 
human figures, each four feet in height. The central figure 
was probably that of the owner of the villa, holding a cup 
of coin in his hands to pay his dependents. The remaining 
figures were male and female alternately, and bore in their 
hands the different instruments still in use for smelting ore, 
such as rakes, forks, pincers, and long iron rods, crooked 
and straight; also canisters, or smelting-pots, from which 
coin is dropping. The same metal was also obtained at 
Snead and other mines, near Bishop's Castle in Shropshire ; 
and a large pig of lead was found in that district, together 
with Roman spades in what is called the Roman Gravels 
Mine, which bears the stamp 

IMP HADRIANI AVG. 

and is now in the Mason College Museum. Copper mines 
of Roman date exist at Llanymynech in Shropshire, where, 
in a large shaft called the Ogo, or hole, several skeletons, 
together with some tools and coins of the reign of Anto- 
ninus, were found in 1761. Similar mines have also been 
found near Machynlleth in Wales. Iron was chiefly worked 
in the Forest of Dean and along the Wye, where great 
quantities of scoriae and ashes have been found, in such 



164 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

bulk, in fact, at one place as to have procured for it the 
name of Cinderford. Under Great Doward Hill, near the 
Wye, there is the remains of an excavation called King 
Arthur's Hall, which was a Roman mine. The Forest of 
Anderida, which occupied the Weald of Sussex and Kent, 
was another source of iron ; and in the Midlands the Roman 
town of Alauna, now Alcester, was a place where iron was 
smelted. Tin was worked in Cornwall before the Roman 
occupation, and there is no doubt that this mineral was 
also mined by them in the same county. It is highly 
probable that they obtained silver, and even possible that 
they may have found gold in this country. 

In the case of former races who have occupied this land 
we have seen that valuable information as to their habits 
and possessions has been afforded to archaeologists by the 
remains which have been found in their graves. In the 
case of the Romans we have so many other sources of 
information on which to rely that the interments take quite 
a secondary place, but they must not be completely passed 
over. 

The Romans dealt with their dead either by cremation 
or by burial of the unburnt corpse. In the former case 
the body was burnt outside the city, as cremation within 
the walls was forbidden by the laws of the Twelve Tables. 
A coin was placed in the mouth for the payment of 
Charon, the ferryman of the nether regions, and the body 
was consumed on a pyre, either in the burial ground, or, in 
the cases of wealthy persons, in some private place of 
cremation. The common burning-places were called 
ustrina, and remains of such have been discovered in a 
Roman cemetery at Littlington, near Royston. This 
cemetery is enclosed within strong walls, which form a 
square of 390 feet. At two of the corners level spaces, free 
from interments but covered with ashes, mark the sites of 
ustrina. The ashes, resulting from the cremation, were 



THE ROMAN OCCUPATION OF BRITAIN 165 

placed in glass or pottery urns, and buried with various 
objects, such as lachrymatories or tear bottles, lamps, vases, 
&c. A group of Roman tumuli called the Bartlow Hills 
exists on the borders of Essex and Cambridgeshire. One of 
of these, when opened, presented a wooden sepulchral 
chamber, which contained a glass vessel with charred bones 
in it, several other glass, bronze and earthenware vessels, 
a bronze lamp, a folding seat, and two bronze strigils, 
or scrapers, such as were used in the bath. Professor 




Fig. 59.— Contents of a Roman Sepulchre discovered at Avisford 
in Sussex. (Wright.) The square bottle, of green glass, in 
the centre contained calcined bones. Around it were arranged 
on the floor three earthen vases with handles, several paterae, 
a pair of sandals (to the left) studded with numerous hexagonal 
brass nails, an oval dish containing a transparent agate of the 
size and shape of a pigeon's egg, and a small double-handled 
glass bottle. Three lamps were placed on supporting projec- 
tions of the stone. 



Henslow was present at the opening of another sepulchral 
chamber at Rougham, in Suffolk, and has given an account 
of its structure and contents. It consisted of four walls of 
bricks and mortar, covered with a roof of tiles, the interior 
depth being 2 ft. 3 in. " On removing one of the smaller 
tiles in the upper range/' he says, " I had the satisfaction of 
peeping into a chamber in which was a large glass vase, 
which owing to the joint effects of time and corruption had 
fallen to pieces ; and its fragments were now lying towards 
the north corner, in" a confused heap, intermixed with the 



1 66 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

burnt human bones it had contained. Upon the heap was 
lying a beautiful glass lachrymatory, slightly injured in its 
projecting rim. Everything else was entire, and eight 
pieces of pottery appeared still to retain the very positions 
in which they had been placed by the sorrowing friends and 
attendants of the deceased, sixteen or seventeen centuries 
before. An iron rod ten inches in length was driven firmly 
into the south-west wall, between the uppermost courses of 
bricks, and not far from the south corner. This was 
directed so as to stretch out towards the centre of the 
chamber, and from its extremity another iron rod depended 
vertically, twisted, like the first, in the manner of a torque. 
To the bottom of this was attached an open iron lamp, of 
rather small dimensions, which still contained a lump of 
carbonaceous matter, evidently the remains of the wick." 

In other cases where the body was interred whole, it was 
placed in a wooden, clay, stone, or lead coffin, together 
with lachrymatories and other objects. In the case of 
leaden coffins, an ornamentation of scallop shells, rings, 
and bead or fillet mouldings in raised relief, is found on the 
exterior, and the corpse seems in every instance to have been 
embedded in liquid lime. In one case the lime in a stone 
sarcophagus retained a perfect cast of the female form which 
it had contained. 

Any account of the Roman remains in Britain would be 
incomplete without some notice of the Roman Wall, which 
has been so fully described by Dr. Collingwood Bruce. 
This remarkable undertaking stretched for seventy-three 
and a half miles from Wall's End in the east to Bowness in 
the west, and was intended to guard the province from the 
attacks of the savage tribes of the northern part of the 
island. On its northern side runs a trench, which keeps 
close to it, and is only discontinued when the wall skirts a 
cliff, where it would have been of no service. Its average 
depth is fifteen feet and its width thirty-five. The wall 



THE ROMAN OCCUPATION OF BRITAIN 167 

itself was of stone obtained from the quarries of the district, 
some of which contain inscriptions recording the legions 
and their commanders who had been engaged upon the 
work. It was about twelve to fifteen feet in height, six to 
nine feet in thickness, and carried a parapet. 

Along the wall were situated various groups of buildings, 
intended for the accommodation of the troops which guarded 
the frontier. The largest of these were the stations, which 
were in fact small towns, covering from five and a half to 
five and three-quarters of an acre. Each had its own walls 
and gates, and contained houses of a much plainer type 
than those in the more sheltered cities of the south. It is 
probable that these stations were erected prior to the wall 
itself for the protection of the soldiers engaged in its con- 
struction. There were about seventeen or eighteen of 
them — that is, there was one about every four miles. The 
remains of several exist, those of Borcovicus, now called 
Housesteads, being the most perfect. At intervals of a mile 
were erected castella, quadrangular buildings, measuring 
fifty by sixty feet, and having two gates, and between each 
of these, at distances of about three hundred feet from one 
another, were four watch-towers. Thus the wall was most 
completely guarded from one end to the other. On the south 
side of the wall was a rampart or vallum, consisting of a trench 
and three walls made partly of earth, partly of stone. This 
rampart does not keep close up to the wall like the northern 
trench, but follows an easier line of country, whereas the 
wall seems to have been of choice placed on the steepest and 
most difficult spots. It is also not quite so long as the wall, 
falling short of it by about three miles at each end. A 
military road, constructed of stone, ran all along the wall on 
its southern side, and between it and the rampart. This 
road, which is about twenty feet wide, did not hug the wall, 
but took the shortest way between one camp and the next. 
There was a second road south of the rampart. Another 



1 68 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

wall still further north connected a series of camps and 
stretched between the Firths of Forth and Clyde. The 
remains of this work are known as Graham's Dyke. We 
find, then, that during the Roman occupation of this country 
it presented, at least so far as the cities and places which 
the Romans themselves occupied, all the evidences of a 
high state of civilisation, a civilisation which in many ways 
startlingly resembles that of our own day, which is in glaring 
contrast to the period which succeeded it, and which makes 
us feel how many years the clock was put back by the 
advent of the barbarian Saxons. It has in fact taken 
us fourteen hundred years to re-learn the lesson that it 
is necessary to provide public baths for the inhabitants of 
our large cities. But it may be asked what effect the 
civilisation of their masters produced upon the British 
inhabitants of the land, and this point has been so skilfully 
dealt with by Mr. Gomme, that I shall quote his observa- 
tions upon it in extenso. " That the Britons could not and 
did not step into the place of their Roman masters (on their 
departure) seems," he says, "to be shown clearly enough. 
At any rate, so far as my own opinion is concerned, I 
cannot ignore the importance of the fact, strangely under- 
valued, if not overlooked, by all historians, that the British 
did not levy a national or imperial force to stem the tide of 
Saxon conquest. So significant a fact surely suggests that 
the Roman occupation of Britain was not a social occupa- 
tion, but a military one, and that Roman Britain meant 
little more than the few thousand luxurious occupiers of the 
villas, the merchants of the cities, together with the various 
garrisons in the military stations which dominated the 
country. Let it be granted that these several centres of 
Roman life gathered round them numerous British followers, 
and by this means permeated a portion of the British popu- 
lation with Roman manners and ideas. But such influence 
as we have here cannot have affected the course of British 



THE ROMAN OCCUPATION OF BRITAIN 169 

history in any considerable degree. It is true that when 
the Roman legions left Britain they had transformed the 
most important of the British camps into military stations 
of great strength, and connected them with one another by 
a vast and splendid system of roadways, along which troops 
could march to the relief of any garrison threatened or 
attacked. But then we find that all these advantages were 
not made available at a time when the bitterest foe of these 
early times made havoc in the land. And yet during one 
bright period of island independence, when Carausius defied 
the imperial power, the whole military system of Britain — 
land forces and sea forces alike — was in full and successful 
operation, giving the world a foretaste of what could be 
done with such splendid machinery. But Carausius was a 
Roman soldier, with Roman soldiers under him ; the unity 
of purpose shown by his action was the result of the Roman 
military hold upon Britain. But there is no unity of 
purpose after the departure of the Roman legions. The 
contrast between the united effort under Carausius, and the 
action of the British tribes when real necessity, not the 
personal ambition of a hero, ought to have called forth the 
best efforts of a whole people, presents to my mind the true 
key to the light understanding of the Roman occupation of 
Britain. If the Romano-British chiefs and princes with 
their followers, betook themselves to the country villas, and 
to the towns, when these places became deserted by their 
whilom conquerors ; if they there carried on the luxurious 
modes of life, and used the ornaments, and adopted the 
social ceremonial of the Romans, as they may have done 
according to the evidence of archaeology, the evidence 
of history precludes us from believing that they also adopted 
the system of government and defence which lay ready to 
their hands, fresh from the mould of Imperial Rome. 
Such a system, if properly carried on, would, in producing 
connected British action, also have produced the germs of 



170 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

British nationality. How little indeed was the chance 
of this is fully shown by the results. Roman commanders 
or their descendants might be represented by Aurelius 
Ambrosius and by the heroic Arthur, or Artorius as 
Mr. Coote has so acutely identified the name; but these 
and other chiefs, even if they themselves lived up in thought 
and aspiration to the traditions of their ancestry, and could 
think of and wish for a British military force, never succeeded 
in commanding anything better than bodies of armed Celtic 
tribesmen, whose ideas and hopes did not extend beyond 
the narrow limits of tribal society. If, then, the English 
conquerors of the British met men organised like themselves 
into tribal groups ; and if we remember that nearly four 
hundred years before Caesar and Plautus and Agricola had 
met the ancestors of those self-same tribal groups, is not the 
conclusion irresistible that the character of the Roman 
occupation was that of a military holding only, and not 
a colonisation ? Is it not further to be concluded that its 
influences did not set loose to any appreciable degree the 
social forces of a higher civilisation upon an intelligent 
though barbarous people ? Such a result must have formed 
in the end a system of culture and civilisation resembling 
in the main outline the original from which it sprang, 
and capable in its turn of influencing a still more barbarous 
conqueror. But so far from this being the case, we find 
that the Roman conquerors found the country occupied by 
tribes of more or less barbarous people, and they left it 
with the tribal organisation still practically unbroken," 



CHAPTER IX 
THE SAXON OCCUPATION 

The Church in Britain — Intermixture of Races — Saxon 
earthworks — Relations to subsequent Norman Castles — 
Offa's Dyke — Methods of Burial — Weapons and other 
objects found in graves — Art — Church architecture. 

The civilisation described in the last chapters was now to 
be completely swept away. The Saxons, Jutes and Angles 
gradually drove the British either to the western side of the 
island, or to take refuge in the fastnesses of some of the 
almost impenetrable forests. Here they seem to have 
lingered longer than in other parts of the island. Indeed, 
in the Forest of Arden and in the Forest of Elmet, near 
what is now Leeds, the British seem to have been able to 
hold their ground long after most other parts of England 
had been cleared almost entirely of their British inhabitants. 
This clearance is exemplified by the history of the Christian 
Church founded either directly from Rome, or indirectly, 
through the Church of Southern Gaul, in this country. It 
had suffered during the various persecutions ordered by the 
Roman Caesars and during that of Diocletian, St. Alban, 
whose name is now attached to the Roman city of Veru- 
lamium, underwent martyrdom at or near that town. But 
in time the Church began to enjoy a greater tranquillity, its 
sacred edifices took their places in the cities, as at Silchester, 
and it even began to gain adherents among the wealthy and 
powerful, if the evidence already cited with regard to the 



i 7 2 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

Chedworth villa is to be regarded as conclusive. Moreover, 
we find that at the Synod of Aries, held in 314, there were 
present Eborius of York, Restitutus of London, and Adel- 
phius of Caerleon-on-Usk, bishops whose Sees were placed 
in important Romano-British cities, as representatives of 
the episcopate of the Church in Britain. Two at least of 
the bishops of the province remained in their cities as long 
as it was possible for them to do so, after the Saxon in- 
vasion — namely, Theon of London and Thadioc of York, 
but they two, we are told, were eventually obliged to fly, 
and, taking with them their reliquaries and sacred vessels, 
find refuge, with their expatriated flocks, in the fastnesses of 
the Cambrian mountains. For many years a barrier of 
heathendom intervened between the British Christians and 
those on the Continent, a fact which accounts for their 
complete or almost complete isolation from communion 
with the rest of the Church. As the conquest was carried 
further westward, the extermination of the natives seems to 
have become relatively less, so that in the south-west parts of 
the island we find less and less evidence in the names of 
the places of Saxon predominance in the district, and more 
and more evidence of the continued occupation of it by its 
British inhabitants. Mr. Green has pointed out that the 
percentages of places whose termination in " ton " shows 
them to have been of Saxon origin, becomes relatively fewer 
the more we approach the south-west corner of the island. 
This termination, he tells us, north of the Mendips — in the 
country which had been won in the early days of West- 
Saxon invasion — bears to all other names the proportion 
of about a third. Between Mendip and Parrett, in the 
country conquered by Centwine, it reaches only a fourth. 
Across the Parrett, but east of the road from Watchet to 
Wellington, the proportion decreases to a fifth ; and west- 
ward of this it becomes rapidly rarer, and varies in different 
districts from an eighth to a tenth. In other words, the 



THE SAXON OCCUPATION 173 

British population, which had withdrawn before the sword 
of Ceawlin, rested in quiet subjection beneath the sword of 
Ine. In Exeter we find a good example of this double 
occupancy, for the southern half of the city was English, 
whilst the northern, as shown by the dedications of the 
churches to Celtic saints, remained in the hands of the 
British. Such double cities are met with in other parts of 
England, as at Shrewsbury, where the Welsh suburb of 
Frankwell, beyond the Severn, and approached from the 
town by the Welsh bridge, had its own peculiar laws and 
customs, and no doubt, at one period, also its population 
of a different race. But in the greater part of the island 
the native population was exterminated or driven out, at 
least to a large extent. Reasoning again from the evidence 
afforded by place names, Mr. Green says, " The designations 
of the local features of the country, the names of hill and 
vale and river, often remain purely Celtic. There are ' pens ' 
and ' duns ' among our uplands, ' combes ' among our 
valleys, ' exes ' and ' ocks ' among our running waters.* 
But when we look at the traces of human life itself, at the 
names of the villages and hamlets which lie scattered over 
the country-side, we find them purely English. The ' vill ' 
and the ' city ' have vanished, and in their place appear the 
1 tun ' and ' ham ' and ■ thorpe ' of the new settlers." 

It is, of course, possible, even probable, that some at 
least of the British inhabitants were held as thralls by their 
Saxon conquerors, but on the whole the latter may be said 
to have fairly cleared a large portion of the island of its 
inhabitants before commencing to settle down and construct 
their strongholds and settlements, after their own plan. 
The huge communal camps of the British and the military 
works of the Romans were not in accordance with the spirit 

* The invaders must, of course, have learnt the Celtic names for 
these places from members, perhaps living with them as slaves, of 
the tribes whom they displaced. 



174 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

of the new comers, whose settlements were of a purely 
family kind. No doubt during the struggle of conquest 
they may at times have utilised some of the earthworks 
which they found ready to their hands, just as the Romans 
had done before them, and they undoubtedly threw up 
earthen ramparts themselves as temporary measures. The 
Roman cities and villas they either sacked and burnt, or 
left to crumble to decay, for, at least during the earlier part 
of their occupation of the land, they did not make any 
permanent use of them, but rather regarded them with a 
superstitious horror. The first fortifications which they 
themselves constructed were called buhrs or burgs, a word 
from which we have obtained our modern title of borough. 
These earthworks were of a totally different nature from 
those of the British period, being intended for the occupa- 
tion and defence of the lord and his household, for the 
protection of his tenants in case of attack, and as places 
where in time of war their flocks and herds might be safely 
housed. Sometimes they were perfectly new erections, in 
other cases pre-existent Roman ramparts appear to have 
been used for a part of the fortifications. Mr. G. T. 
Clark has given a full account of these earthworks in his 
" Mediaeval Military Architecture," which may here be 
quoted. " These works, thrown up in England in the ninth 
and tenth centuries, are seldom, if ever, rectangular, nor 
are they governed to any great extent by the character of 
the ground. First was cast up a truncated cone of earth, 
standing at its natural slope, from twelve to even fifty or 
sixty feet in height. This 'mound,' 'motte,' or 'burh,' the 
' Mota ' of our records, was formed from the contents of a 
broad and deep circumscribing ditch. This ditch, proper 
to the mound, is now sometimes wholly or partially filled 
up, but it seems always to have been present, being in fact 
the parent of the mound. Berkhampstead is a fine example 
of such a mound, with the original ditch. At Caerleon, 



THE SAXON OCCUPATION 175 

Tickhill and Lincoln it has been in part filled up; at 
Cardiff it was wholly so, but has been recently most care- 
fully cleared out, and its original depth and breadth are 
seen to have been very formidable. Though usually 
artificial, these mounds are not always so. Durham, 
Launceston, Montacute, Dunster, Restormel, Nant Cribba, 




Fig. 60. — Plan of a Burh. The mound and its ditch are at the 
upper part of the figure. The base-court, with rampart, ditch 
and entrance, are below. 



are natural hills ; Windsor, Tickhill, Lewes, Norwich, Ely 
and the Devizes are partly so ; at Sherborne and Heading- 
ham the mound is a natural platform, scarped by art ; at 
Tutbury, Pontefract and Bramber, where the natural plat- 
form was also large, it has been scarped and a mound 
thrown up upon it. Connected with the mound was also a 
base-court or enclosure, sometimes circular, more commonly 
oval or horse-shoe shaped, but if of the age of the mound 



176 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

always more or less rounded. This enclosure had also its 
bank and ditch on its outward faces, its rear resting on the 
ditch of the mound, and the area was often further 
strengthened by a bank along the crest of the scarp of the 
ditch. Now and then, as at Old Sarum, there is an 
additional but slighter bank placed outside the outer ditch 
— that is, upon the crest of the counterscarp. This was 
evidently intended to carry a palisade. The mound is 
either central or at other times is placed in one corner of 
the enclosure, no doubt with the idea of concentrating the 
stables and other offices in one part and of making the 
mound itself a part of the exterior defences." The top of 
the mound was probably surrounded with a strong fence of 
wood, and formed the earthen keep of a primitive form of 
castle. In examples which can be seen in Herefordshire, 
Shropshire, and elsewhere, these earthworks remain un- 
touched, save by the hand of time, but in many places they 
have been utilised by the Normans when they in turn took 
possession of the land. In some cases the earthen bank 
was perhaps found to have too small an area on the top, or 
for some other reason to be unsuited for the purposes of 
the Norman builder. This appears to have been the case 
at Holgate in Shropshire, where the Saxon mound of 
remarkable steepness, but with a very small area at the top, 
stands between the church and the remains of the castle 
founded by one Helgotus, shortly after the Norman con- 
quest. In a great majority of cases, however, when the 
Norman took possession of the Saxon lord's lands, he also 
took over his " buhr " or stronghold, and converted it into a 
fortress after his own manner, by building a keep upon the 
mound and walls within the outer defences. Thus were 
formed the outer and inner baily of a castle. An artificial 
mound, however, such as that of a Saxon burh, had not 
the solidity or stability necessary for the erection of the 
rectangular tower keep, which the Norman used when he 



THE SAXON OCCUPATION 



177 



was building on a perfectly new site, and of which the 

Tower of London presents an example. He was obliged 

to modify his architecture and build what is called a 

shell-keep, an altogether 

lighter form of building, .,---- c\^^S ? Kr~~~'~"~' 

consisting of a wall, .-^^ m»Rl'®%fc :: 

governed in its shape by 

the form of the mound 

on which it stood, and 

sometimes strengthened 

by pilasters. These 

keeps, many of which 

exist in the country, 

point in most cases to 

the presence of an earlier Saxon mound and ditches. 

Such an earthen castle or burh was the fortified house 

of a strong man ; the ton or tun was the enclosed 

and fortified village or single large farm. The tun was 




Fig. 61.-— A Rectangular Norman 
Keep. 




Fig. 62. — A Norman Shell-keep. 



surrounded by a rampart and a ditch, and the crest of the 
former was further guarded by a palisade or by a thick 
hedge. Inside the enclosure thus formed lay, if it was a 
village, the houses of the inhabitants, the smaller farms 

M 



178 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

with their cattle-sheds, barns and other offices. In the 
centre was either a sacred tree or a mound, at which were 
held the meetings of the householders for the regulation of 
the affairs of the village and the appointment of the village 
officers, of whom more will be said in a later chapter. 
These tuns often originated as small clearings in the virgin 
forest, by which they were surrounded, in which respect 
they resembled the first settlements of the backwoodsmen 
of America or any other primitively afforested country. 
But the bands of forest intervening between neighbouring 
villages were jealously preserved by the Saxons as means of 
defence, for the dominant character of such settlements 
was their primitive independence one of another. Thus 
we find amongst the customs of the period that any person 
crossing the belt of forest to visit the village was bound to 
give notice of his coming by blowing a horn, or run the risk 
of being slain by the first person whom he might meet. 
Each of these tuns was known by the name of the real or 
supposed ancestor of the family by whom it was founded. 
Thus if Mr. Green's view as to the first-named place is 
correct, Birmingham was the ham or home of the Beorm- 
ings or children of Beorm, just as Leamington was the ton 
or village of the Learnings or children of Leam. 

Besides the earthworks just mentioned, various long lines 
of embankment in different parts of the country have been 
assigned to the Saxon period. The most important of these 
is the dyke bounding, in a large part of its course, the eastern 
frontier of Wales, which bears the name of OrTa, and is sup- 
posed to have been erected by the orders of that monarch. 
Professor M 'Kenny Hughes has, however, thrown consider- 
able doubt upon this hypothesis, and thinks that it may 
have been the work of British, Roman or Romano-British 
hands, so that its exact period, as well as that of similar 
dykes in that and other parts of the country, must still be 
considered to be unsettled. 



THE SAXON OCCUPATION 



79 



The methods of interment used by the Saxons were 
various. In the earlier times they seem to have been buried, 
generally after cremation, in a 
mound erected over the remains 
of the funeral pyre, which was 
called a " hlow," a word which ap- 
pears in names such as Ludlow, or 
" bearw," whence our modern term 
"barrow." Somewhat later, cre- 
mation seems to have been discon- 
tinued, and the body was interred 
in a pit in the ground, either at 
full length or doubled up ; and 
with it were buried the short knife 
or seax, from which the national 
name derived its origin, the long, 
double-edged iron sword, the spear 
and the shield, with other articles 
sometimes of great value. We find 
this custom alluded to in the poem 
of Beowulf, which contains many 
facts of interest concerning the life 
and customs of the Saxons in their 
pagan condition. After telling of 
the burning of the body of Beowulf, 
it describes how they raised 




' A pile on the earth all unweaklike 

that was 
With war-helms behung, and with 

boards of the battle, 
And bright byrnies, e'en after the boon that he bade. 
Laid down then amidmost their king mighty-famous 
The warriors lamenting, the lief lord of them. 
Began on the burg of bale-fires the biggest 
The warriors to waken ; the wood-reek went up 
Swart over the smoky glow, sound of the flame 



Fig. 63. — Anglo-Saxon 
Tomb at Ozingell. 
The warrior's spear is 
at his left hand, his 
knife at his right, and 
the sword across his 
loins. The circle 
marks the probable 
outline of his shield, 
of which the central 
boss alone remains. 
(Thesaurus Cranio- 
rum.) 



180 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

Bewound with the weeping (the wind-blending stilled) , 
Until it at last the bone-house had broken." 

And after the process of cremation was over 

' ' Wrought there and fashion'd the folk of the Weders 
A howe* on the lithe, f that high was and broad, 
Unto the wave-farers wide to be seen ; 
Then it they betimbered in time of ten days, 
The battle-strong's beacon ; the brands' very leavings 
They bewrought with a wall in the worthiest of ways, 
That men of all wisdom might know how to work. 
Into burg then they did the rings and bright sun-gems, 
And all such adornments as in the hoard there 
The war-minded men had taken e'er now ; 
The earl's treasure let they the earth to be holding, 
Gold in the grit, wherein yet it liveth, 
As useless to men-folk as ever it was." 

In some instances the Roman places of interment and 
even the long barrows of the Neolithic period were utilised 
by the Saxons for the purposes of burial, but such secondary 
interments can be distinguished by the character of the 
articles buried with the dead. Saxon cemeteries, where 
numerous interments have taken place, have been dis- 
covered in many parts of the country, as at Sleaford, where 
the graveyard occupied an area of 3600 square yards, and 
seems to have contained about six hundred graves. These 
were arranged in rows, each body being about ten feet from 
the next, and buried at a depth of nearly three feet. Most 
of the bodies found in this cemetery were doubled up, with 
the knees bent and the hands placed in front of the face. 
The body was laid on the left side, with the head towards 
the west and the face to the north. A few instances of 
cremation were also met with in this cemetery, the graves in 
these cases containing sepulchral urns, filled with calcined 
bones. A curious feature in this instance is the complete 
absence of swords in the interments, no trace of any such 
* A mound or barrow. t Body. 



THE SAXON OCCUPATION 181 

weapon having been found, though knives, buckles, brooches 
and other ornaments of bronze, glass, amber and ivory were 
met with. 

It will now be necessary to describe some of the com- 
moner weapons and other articles found in these graves 
somewhat more fully. The swords made of iron, with 
either single or double edges, were often three feet in 
length, and possessed in some cases highly ornamented 
hilts, which were wrought of silver or bronze, and inscribed 
with legions in runic letters, a fact which is alluded to in 
the poem of Beowulf. 

" Now spake out Hrothgar, as he looked on the hilts there, 
The old heir-loom whereon was writ the beginning 
Of the strife of the old time, whenas the flood slew, 
The ocean a-gushing, that kin of the giants 
As fiercely they fared. That was a folk alien 
To the Lord everlasting ; so to them a last guerdon 
Through the welling of waters the Wielder did give. 
So was on the sword-guards all of the sheer gold 
By dint of the rune-staves rightly bemarked, 
Set down and said for whom first was that sword wrought, 
And the choice of all irons erst had been done, 
Wreath-hilted and worm-adorned." * 

The scabbard of such a sword was of wood, and w T as tipped 
and edged with bronze. The sword was slung from the 
girdle, and so also was the short, triangular-bladed knife, 
which was probably also used as a dagger. Of the spear, 
as a rule, only the iron parts — viz., the head and the ferule 
and spike of the lower end — remain, the ashen shaft having 
perished. On the breast of the corpse the shield, made of 
linden-wood, the yellow war-board of Beowulf, was laid 
flat. It is highly probable that it was originally covered 
with leather, but nothing usually remains of it except the 

* This passage, with those previously quoted from the same 
poem, is taken from the translation published by the late Mr. 
William Morris and Mr. Wyatt in the Kelmscott edition. 



1 82 



LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 




large iron boss which formed its centre. Coats of ringed 
mail have also been met with in these graves, as well as 

helmets, made entirely or 
in part of iron or brass. 
These were often orna- 
mented with a figure of 
the sacred boar, or some- 
times with an image of 
Woden. The Saxons dis- 
played a remarkable skill 
in goldsmith's work, and 
many personal ornaments 
of a very high excellence 
have been found in their 
graves. Amongst the most 
characteristic of these are 
the fibulae or brooches, 
which are of different 
shapes and made of various 
metals. Sometimes they 
are circular and made of 
gold, ornamented with fili- 
gree work and jewels, usually 
garnets or enamel. Fibulae 
of this type are believed to 
have been chiefly made by 
the Jutes. The pattern as- 
sociated with the Angles is 
that of a T, generally made 
of gilt bronze or brass, 
and sometimes of very large 
dimensions. The form supposed to be characteristic of 
the Saxons is saucer-shaped, and is also made of brass 
or bronze. Very numerous buckles have been found, and 
also chatelaines, which, with their various pendant objects, 



Fig. 64. — Anglo-Saxon Fibulae. 
(Wright.) The upper right 
fig. was found at Sittingbourne, 
Kent, is of gold and set with 
rubies, garnets and blue stones. 
The upper left fig. was found at 
Ingarsby, near Leicester, and 
that below it at Stowe Heath, 
near Icklingham, Suffolk. The 
two small objects between the 
circular fibulae were found 0.1 
Stowe Heath in Suffolk. The 
lowest fig. on the right was 
found at Ashendon, Bucks, and 
is set with pieces of coloured 
glass. 



THE SAXON OCCUPATION 



183 



including keys, seem to have been largely worn by the 
Saxon women. The Saxon pottery known to us largely 
consists of cinerary urns of the period when cremation was 
the rule. Such urns are generally hand-made, of a dark- 
coloured clay, and are ornamented with projecting knobs 
or bosses at the sides, zigzags, circles, squares and other 





Fig. 65.— Anglo-Saxon Glass Tumblers. (Wright.) 



figures which might have been easily impressed upon them 
with a sharpened stick. The Saxons worked in glass with 
much greater skill, the material differing chiefly from that 
of the Roman period in being thinner, not so fine in 
texture, and more subject to an opalescent change. Their 
beads of glass were often variegated with stripes of different 
colours, but the articles which are most characteristic of 
their skill as glass-workers are tumblers. These vessels, 
which really deserved the name to which they gave rise, 
were incapable of standing, having rounded or pointed bases, 
which were perhaps designed originally on the lines of the 
Roman amphora, or perhaps were constructed on the lines 
of that primitive drinking vessel a cow's horn. They were 
ornamented with twisted cords and ridges of glass, and 
sometimes had hollow projections opening out from them. 



184 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

Their love of ornament was not confined to work in metal 
and glass, for after they had embraced Christianity they 
became celebrated for the beauty of the manuscripts and 
illuminations which their scribes produced, and not less for 
the elaborate bindings, partly composed of plates of metal 
and studded with crystals, which they constructed for their 
safe keeping. The peculiarity of Anglo-Saxon illumination, 
says Godwin, consists in an elaborate intricacy, the intro- 
duction of panels within the letters, the use of spiral lines 
and ribbon : work, and the filling up and ornamentation with 
lizard-like animals of every conceivable shape. 

It will not be necessary to deal at any length with the 
religious views of the Anglo-Saxons, since so much has been 
written about them in readily accessible manuals. The 
names of some of their principal deities still remain in daily 
use as the names of the days of the week. Woden or Odin, 
whose name is found in our Wednesday, has given it also to 
many other objects in England such as the Wansdyke, and 
to places such as Wednesbury, near Birmingham, or Wodens- 
beorh, where the hill, on which now stands the Church 
of St. Bartholomew, is said to have previously possessed a 
temple dedicated to the worship of Odin. Thor or Thunor, 
after whom we name Thursday, was the wielder of the 
hammer, and the Celt or stone axe came to be looked upon 
as his characteristic weapon. Fairies and elves entered 
largely into the Saxon mythology and find a place in the 
names of the period, many of which, such as Aelfred 
(elves' counsel) are compounded of the word aelf, a fairy. 

After the introduction of Christianity, various churches 
were erected by the Saxons, or at least at a pre-conquest 
date, of which the most remarkable example is the tiny 
edifice at Bradford-on-Avon, near Bath, which was built at 
the end of the seventh century, by St. Ealdhelm, to com- 
memorate the victory of Cenwealh over the West Welsh, at 
that place, in 652. The chief characteristics of this style of 



THE SAXON OCCUPATION 



185 




Fig. 66. — Illuminated Page from a Saxon Manuscript, traditionally stated to 
have been executed by the Venerable Bede. (From a figure in West wood's 
" Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts.") 



1 86 



LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 



architecture are — (i) the alternation of stones laid perpen- 
dicularly and horizontally to form the sides of doorways and 
windows, an arrangement known as " long and short work " ; 

(2) the absence of buttresses to the walls, which are, how- 
ever, provided with a slightly raised series of pilasters, 
designed probably to hold the plaster or stucco in position ; 

(3) the circular or triangular shape of the arches of windows 
and doors. The edifices are adorned in some instances 




Fig. 67. — The Anglo-Saxon Church at Bradford- on- Avon, 
a figure in the ArchcEological Journal.) 



(After 



with exceedingly rude carvings. Such are some of the most 
characteristic objects associated with the Saxon invaders of 
this country, and if they have been very briefly touched upon, 
it is because the period is one which receives more attention 
in ordinary text-books of history than those which preceded 
it, so that a detailed account is rendered less necessary. 

As to the culture of the period, it will have been gathered 
that it was, especially at the time of the invasion, very much 
lower in the scale of civilisation than that which it extermi- 
nated and replaced. Of the development and gradual evolu- 
tion of the life of the time into a state of things belonging 
to comparatively recent history something will be said in 
the next chapter. 



CHAPTER X 
TRIBAL AND VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 

The Tribal Community — Its members— The strangers living 
withit — The Chieftain— His house — The Village community 
— The Hall — Evolution of the Manor-house — The Lord of 
the Manor— How a Manor was formed — The Inhabitants 
of the Village —The Land around it— Its Allotment — The 
Manor of Westminster at the Conquest — The Island of Heis- 
geier. 

Without entering into details on this matter, it may be 
said without much fear of contradiction that the Tribal was 
an earlier system than the Village, and on that account it 
will be necessary first of all to turn our attention to its 
peculiarities. As it existed to a later date in Wales than in 
other parts of the country, it is but natural that we should 
have fuller records of the tribal system in that country than 
elsewhere, and when we come to study it we find that the 
ruling principle which underlay all its regulations was that 
of the blood-relationship existing amongst a group of free 
tribesmen. 

No one who did not belong to the kin could become 
a member of the tribe, save under the most exceptional 
circumstances, and this, although tribesmen and non-tribes- 
men existed side by side. The gulf between the two classes 
was wide, though not absolutely impassable. Residence in 
Wales, at least according to the laws of the southern part 
of the principality, for no less than nine generations, made 
the ninth descendant a Cymro. Averaging the interval 



188 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

between each link in the chain of descent as twenty years, 
it would take more than a century and a half for the descend- 
ants of a family of non-tribesmen, constantly intermarrying 
with non-tribesmen, to become admitted to the tribe. This 
length of time might be curtailed if marriages took place in 
each generation with Cymraes women, for after four genera- 
tions of such marriages, when the family blood would be 
seven-eighths Cymric, the family would become naturalised 
tribesmen. But there was an even speedier method of 
entering the kin, and that was by the stranger's purchase of 
his freedom at the risk of his life, in defending the lives or 
privileges of tribesmen. The laws provided for the cases as 
follows : "(i) If a person be killed, and his kindred shall 
not obtain right, and his kinsmen proceed to avenge their 
kin, and they deem their number small, and if a stranger 
come and proceed along with them upon the privilege of kin, 
saying, ' I will go along with you to avenge your kin, and will 
take upon myself the slaughter and blood of him whom ye 
also ^shall take upon yourselves,' and they kill one or more, 
on account of their kin, such stranger obtains the privilege 
of kin. (2) If a person be condemned to lawful wager of 
battle, either for land or soil, or for any crime, and he should 
dread in his heart entering into personal combat, and a 
stranger should arise and say to him, ' I will go in thy stead 
to combat,' and he should escape thereby, such stranger 
acquires the privilege of a brother to him, or- nephew, the 
son of a sister." Nothing can show more powerfully the 
value attached to kinship than the care which was taken 
to preserve its rights for the children of those who had them- 
selves committed such crimes against the tribe as to have 
become kin-wrecked, or deprived of their own rights. Such 
rights of all kinds were preserved intact until the ninth 
generation, when, if they were not claimed, they lapsed. 
The law relating to this is most striking. " If the ninth man 
come to claim land, his title is extinguished, and that person 



TRIBAL AND VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 189 

is to raise an outcry that from being a proprietor he is be- 
coming a non-proprietor, and then the law listens to that 
outcry, and assigns to him a free tribesman's portion, and 
the outcry is called ' an outcry over the abyss.' " What, asks 
Mr. Seebohm, is this terrible " cry over the abyss " but the 
last despairing cry of a kinsman on the point of losing 
for ever, for himself and for his descendants, his rights of 
kinship ? 

The strangers who lived alongside the tribe, but not of 
it, suffered under certain disadvantages, the significance of 
which is not difficult to understand when one has grasped the 
fundamental idea of the system. Their evidence was of no 
value against a free Cymro. Whilst every tribesman must 
have his " sword and spear and bow, with twelve arrows in 
the quiver," always ready, no weapons of any kind were 
permitted to a stranger until the third generation, nor were 
the rights of hunting or horsemanship allowed to any but 
an innate Cymro. Finally, without the consent of the lord 
whom he served, the stranger could not become a scholar, 
a smith, or a bard. But if his lord did not interfere with 
him until he was tonsured as a scholar, or until he had set 
up a smithy of his own or graduated in song as a bard, he 
was free. The Triads, from which we obtain so much 
information as to ancient Welsh customs, tell us that the 
object of these precautions was to keep the stranger class 
weak and unorganised, "to guard against treachery and 
ambush," and "to prevent the plotting of strangers and 
their adherents, lest alltuds (or aliens) obtain the lands of 
the innate Cymry." 

The idea of chieftainship of such a tribe naturally 
evolved itself from that of the headship of the house- 
hold, the holder of which was the chief of the kin to 
the fourth descent. But side by side with the idea 
of the chieftancy of the kindred, there appears to have 
gradually developed in the Welsh system a territorial lord- 



i 9 o LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

ship, which, with its various classes of followers and its 
courts, seemed to the eyes of the Norman lawyers closely to 
resemble the manorial system. Superior to all these minor 
rulers was the Brenhin or King of Aberffraw, whose 
authority extended over all Wales ; for though the two other 
divisions of that country, Gwent and Dimetia, each had its 
own Brenhin, they were inferior and subject to him of 
Aberffraw, just as the Ard-Ri of Ireland was a king over 
other kings of lesser powers and jurisdiction. 

We gain a considerable insight into the manner of life 
of the period by what the laws teach us as to the provision 
which had to be made for the Brenhin when he was 
travelling through his dominions. The house in which he 
lay had to be provided by the aliens, and consisted of six 
columns or poles, probably often newly-felled trees, placed 
in parallel rows of three and fastened together at the top to 
the roof -tree, thus forming a kind of nave. Then at some 
distance behind the poles low walls of stakes and wattle 
shut in the aisles. The roof was covered with branches and 
thatch, and there were wattle doors of entrance at the end. 
Along the aisles behind the poles were placed beds of rushes, 
and the footboards of the beds were used as seats during 
the daytime. All houses put up in this way were alike, and 
each piece of timber had its customary value, from the poles 
and the roof- tree down to the stakes and the wattles. The 
fire was in the middle between the central posts and divided 
the upper portion, where the chief and his principal officers 
sat, from the lower end of the hall which was reserved for 
the humbler folk. The silentiary stood by one of the central 
posts, and it was his duty to call attention, when required, 
by striking it with his staff. A most interesting parallel to 
this hall is found in the description in the Boldon Book of 
the hunting lodge which the villeins of the Bishop of 
Durham had to provide for the great hunt of that prelate, 
and this parallel shows us how widespread was the custom 



TRIBAL AND VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 191 

of erecting such a temporary habitation at a time when 
great houses were few and far between. This hall was to be 
constructed in the forest and to be 60 ft. long and 16 ft. 
wide between the posts, and to have a steward's room, a 
chamber and a "privat." The villeins had also to construct 
a chapel 40 ft. long by 15 ft. wide, for which they received 
two shillings of charity, and to make their portion of the 
hedge round the lodges. On the departure of the bishop 
they received a full tun of beer. Such are some of the 
glimpses which we gain of the life in the earlier or tribal 
community, which we must now leave in order to study the 
origin of the village life of England as exemplified in its 
village communities. Such villages, as shown by Mr. 
Thorold Rogers, consisted for the most part of the abodes 
of the villagers, which were built of wattles smeared inside 
and out with mud or clay. These were crowded around 
the church, which was the common hall of the village. It 
was also the place of refuge in time of danger, and indeed, 
coming down to a later period, no one can look at the solid, 
low-built, small-windowed towers of the Norman churches 
along the Welsh marches without feeling that that they were 
intended for fortresses as well as for the most prominent 
features of places of worship. The only houses of any im- 
portance in the village were those of the lord, the priest, and 
the miller. What these were like, says Mr. Gomme, may be 
gathered from such a house as that known as Gatacre Hall, 
which existed down to some eighty years ago in Shropshire, 
and closely resembled such primitive Aryan abodes as may 
be found in Media. It was nearly an exact square. At 
each corner, and in the middle of each side, and in the 
centre was an immense oak, hewed nearly square and with- 
out branches, set with its head on large stones laid about a 
foot deep in the ground and with its roots uppermost, w T hich 
roots, with a few rafters, formed a complete arched roof. 
Such a house is a permanent edition of the temporary 



i 9 2 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

abode of the Brenhin of Aberffraw, and shows us that the hall 
is the first and central point of the house, a fact which Mr. 
Green has insisted upon, when dealing with Saxon times. 
" The hall was the common living place of all the dwellers 
within the house. Here the 'board,' set up on trestles 
when needed, furnished a rough table for the family meal ; 
and when the board was cleared away the women bore the 
wooden cups for beer, or drinking-horns, to the house-master 
and his friends as they sat on the settles or benches ranged 
round the walls ; while the gleeman sang his song, or the 
harp was passed round from hand to hand. Here, too, 
when night came and the fire died down, was the common 
sleeping-place, and men lay down to rest upon the bundles 
of straw which they had strewn about its floor." 

No doubt the single-roomed house was the earliest form, 
and its next development would probably be the addition 
of a second story for sleeping purposes. 

As it is interesting to see how such simple abodes 
developed into the stately and splendid manor-house of 
Elizabethan and Jacobean times, the following account, in 
which Mr. Baring Gould attempts such a task, may be 
quoted. Describing some fifteenth-century examples in 
his own neighbourhood, he says of one such house : " It 
has stained-glass coats of arms in the hall-window. This 
house has been used as a farmhouse for three hundred 
years at least, but it was originally the seat of an influential 
family in the county. Now what are its arrangements? 
There is a porch ; from the porch you enter the hall, with 
a huge fireplace and stained glass in the windows ; but do 
not imagine a baronial hall, but a low room, seven feet to 
the rafters unceiled. Behind the hall is a lean-to back 
kitchen which, I suspect, is a latter addition. Beside the 
porch a dairy and larder. A winding stair of stone, and 
you reach the bedroom. I say the bedroom, because 
positively there was only one, with a huge six-light window 



TRIBAL AND VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 193 

opening into it, over the porch, dairy, and hall. In the hall 
the family sat — squire, ladies, serving-men, and maids ; up- 
stairs — let us trust with some sort of screen between them — 
the whole community slept in one room. In Queen Anne's 
time this arrangement was too primitive even for the farmer, 
and an additional wing was erected, with a drawing-room 
below and a second bedroom upstairs. But, no, perhaps I 
am wrong in thinking and asserting that the entire family of 
squire and retainers pigged upstairs in one room ; on further 
consideration, I believe that the serving-men slept on the 
benches and in the straw on the ground about the fire of 
the hall ; and very probably so did the sons of the squire. 
Upstairs he had his four-poster with curtains around, but the 
daughters and servant-girls had their uncurtained truckle 
bedsteads in the same room. An advance was made when 
partitions were erected, constituting a series of bedrooms ; 
but even then all the rooms communicated with each other. 
Usually this was the arrangement : in the centre of the 
house, upstairs at the stair-head, slept the squire and his 
wife ; on the right hand, through a door, marched the sons 
and serving -men to their beds ; and through a door on the 
left hand trotted the daughters and the maid-servants to 
their beds. In a will as late as 1652 a gentleman leaves 
his dwelling-house to his son Thomas, ' and my will is 
that my daughter Joan shall have free ingress, egress, and 
regress to the bedd in the chamber where she now lyeth, so 
long as she continueth unmarried,' which is explicable 
enough when we understand how the bedrooms opened one 
out of another, and how the master of the house commanded 
the approach to them by sleeping at the top of the stairs. In 
the parish of Little Hempston, near Totnes, is a perfect 
example of a house of the time of Richard II. It was pro- 
bably a manor-house of the family of Arundell, but was 
given to the church, and become the parsonage. It is 
absolutely unaltered and is of extraordinary interest. It 

N 



i 9 4 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

consists of a quadrangle,, with buildings on all four sides, 
but the central court is only about twenty feet by twelve 
feet, into which all the windows look from sunless rooms. 
The only exception is the hall-window which has a southern 
aspect. The hall was heated by a brazier in the centre, and 
the smoke went out at a louvre in the roof. There was one 
gloomy parlour, with a fireplace in it, opening out of this 
hall. All the rest of the quadrangle was taken up with 
kitchen, porter's lodge, cellar, and stables. Upstairs one 
long dormitory. The hall window, in such houses, for long 
remained a prominent feature. Often it forms a bay, and 
in the side of it may frequently be found a lavatory. The 
ladies of the house sat in this window at their needlework, 
whilst in the smaller houses the cooking went on at the hall 
fire. The hall served, as we have seen, as kitchen, dining- 
room, parlour, and bedroom for the men. In Elizabeth's 
reign the bay of the bay window became more prominent, 
and was even sometimes cut off from the hall by panelling. 
The ceiling of the bay is low, whereas that of the hall is high, 
the ladies began to look to their comforts, but they had no 
separate fire in this bower. If their fingers became cold, 
they had to run into the hall and warm them at the common 
fire. Then, still later, came parlours as separate rooms, 
generally on the side of the hall opposite to the entrance, 
and often forming a wing projecting at right angles. At first 
all houses of any importance affected the quadrangle : but 
the dwelling-house formed only one side of it, the others 
were occupied by stables, cow-houses, barns, and lodge. 
The windows all looked into the yard. When, however, 
this arrangement ceased to be necessary, because of the 
greater security in the country, the owners pulled down their 
farm-buildings and reconstructed them behind the house, so 
that a little sun might look in at their windows, and that 
they might have a little prospect out of them other than 
heaps of stable manure and the walls and roofs of cow- 



TRIBAL AND VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 195 

houses. There still remain, however, in certain districts on 
the borders of Dartmoor, a number of the early manor 
houses thus constructed and quite unaltered, left unaltered 
because their protection is needed from the boisterous gales. 
When the farm buildings before the house were removed, 
the house itself presented a perfectly plain straight front, 
occasionally with a plain projecting porch, but not usually. 
The projecting porch was erected later, because the front 
entrance was exposed by the removal of the farm buildings. 
Eliminating these erections, the earliest houses of Henry II.'s 
reign were plain long buildings. Then a porch was added. 
Next, at right angles, a set of superior apartments or a parlour 
was erected, and the house was changed to the shape of a 
capital F. Increased wealth and need of accommodation, 
fashion and compliment to the reigning sovereign, made the 
house assume the shape of H or E. But the old quad- 
rangles, very small, remain often where least expected. 
They have been glazed over, and turned into a central 
staircase." 

The centre of the village, considered as a cluster of houses, 
was that of the lord, and he himself was its culminating 
point, if it be regarded as a congeries of human beings. The 
lord or Thegn held his manor of the king, in return for 
certain services, military and otherwise, always including the 
three great duties, the trinoda necessitas of the Rectitu- 
dines, in which were summed up the duties of the various 
persons connected with manors. These three duties were — 
"fyrd," the accompanying the king upon his military expedi- 
tions ; " buhrbote," the aiding him in the building of his 
castles ; and " brigbote," the maintenance of the bridges of 
the district. The lord of a village may have gained it in 
the first place as the leader of the band of warriors who 
drove out its original possessors, or he may have obtained 
it by a grant from the crown or from some great lord, or, 
again, he may have carved it out for himself from the waste 



196 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

forest-land which covered so much of the country. It 
was in the second of these ways that the abbeys became 
possessed of so many manors, where the abbot was repre- 
sented by a reeve who acted as the head of the village. 

The last process is perhaps the most interesting from 
the point of view of this book. One can easily picture 
the formation of such a village by some energetic pioneer, 
who, having laboriously made a clearing in the forest, 
erected his wattle house, tilled his scanty fields, and gradually 
enlarged his borders and his population by the accession 
of fresh persons anxious to form a part of his village. Such 
a process must often have taken place, and its termination 
would be the conversion of the new village into a manor 
by grant of the land from the crown or the over-lord, after 
it had been cleared and colonised. As Mr. Seebohm 
points out, we get a glimpse of this process, and of the 
transition of the soil, from being laen-land (land granted as 
a benefice to a thane for life) to becoming boc-land (land 
of inheritance permanently made over by charter or deed), 
in a book written by King Alfred, and entitled " Blossom 
Gatherings from St. Augustine." The king describes how 
the forest provides every requisite for building, shafts and 
handles for tools, timbers for house-building, fair rods with 
which many a house may be constructed and many a fair 
tun timbered, wherein men may dwell permanently in peace 
and quiet, summer and winter, which, he adds parentheti- 
cally, is more than I have done yet. There is, he says, an 
eternal " ham " above, but He that has promised it through 
the holy Fathers might in the meantime make him, so long 
as he was in this world, to dwell softly in a log-hut on laen- 
land, waiting patiently for his eternal inheritance. So we 
wonder not, he proceeds, that men should work in timber 
felling and in carrying and in building, for a man hopes 
that if he has built a cottage on laen-land of his 
lord's, with his lord's help he may be allowed to lie 



TRIBAL AND VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 197 

there awhile, and hunt and fowl and fish, and occupy 
the laen as he likes on sea or land, until through his 
lord's grace he may perhaps some day obtain boc-land 
and a permanent inheritance. Finally, he completes 
his parable by contrasting the log-hut upon laen-land, 
and the permanent freehold " ham " on the boc-land or 
hereditary manorial estate. 

The lands around a village of the kind with which we are 
dealing were of two kinds. There was first the personal 
demesne of the lord, his home-farm, which he tilled for himself 
by the work of his villeins and theows or slaves, or let out for 
money if he pleased. Secondly, there was the remainder of 
the land which was held in villenage. This introduces us to 
the class of inhabitants known as villeins, who held lands 
from the lord, at his will, and in return for certain services 
hereafter to be named. They were the highest class of 
villagers and formed the jury at the Halimote or manorial 
court. Their holdings were hereditary, and passed by 
re-grant of the lord, from father to son by the rule of primo- 
geniture, on payment of the customary heriot or relief, 
exacted down to recent times, many years after the services, 
which the lord was supposed to have rendered for it, had 
fallen into desuetude. They could and did make wills, and 
but for certain other features of their position might have 
been looked upon as free men. But they had to perform 
certain services for their lord, and these were of three 
kinds : — (1) Week-work, or so many days, generally three, of 
labour for the lord. The amount and kind of this work, 
whether reaping, ploughing or otherwise, was regulated by 
custom. (2) Precarise, or boon-work, which was special 
work performed at request and sometimes counted as part 
of the week-work, sometimes as extra to it. (3) Payments 
in money or kind or work rendered by way of rent or 
Gafol, with various dues, such as Kirk-scot, Hearth-penny 
and Easter dues. All these of course might have been looked 



ig8 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

upon as being of the nature of rent, rates and taxes, but there 
were other rules to which the villeins were subject which 
were far more distinctly servile than those just enumerated. 
Thus if a villein wished to marry his daughter to any one, he 
had first to obtain a licence from his lord. If she lost her 
chastity, the father was fined, and if the village jury became 
cognisant of the fact and did not report it to the lord, they 
were all fined. No villein might sell an ox without his 
lord's permission, and if he left the village, he was searched 
for, and, when found, arrested as a fugitive and taken back. 
He must also use his lord's flour-mill for the grinding of his 
corn. 

A somewhat inferior class of villagers was that of the 
cotarii or bordarii, sometimes possessed of no land, some- 
times of only a garden. In other cases they had a holding 
possibly of only one acre, or even so many as ten, in the 
open fields near the village. But typically the cotarius was 
a cottager — indeed, our present word is derived from the 
earlier — who held, in addition to his cottage, five acres in 
the open fields. He was subordinate to the villein, did not 
ordinarily share in the deliberations of the manorial court, 
put no oxen into the village plough-team and took no 
part in the common ploughing. He performed services for 
his lord of a character somewhat more trivial than those of 
the villein. Below the cotarius was the servus or slave, but 
before dealing with him it will be well to say something 
about the corporate character of the village, a strongly 
marked feature in such communities. It possessed several 
officials, such as the blacksmith, whose duty it was to keep 
in repair the ironwork of the ploughs of the village, and the 
carpenter, who had charge of the woodwork. These officials 
held their lands free from the ordinary services on account 
of the duties which they performed for the community. 
The affairs of the village were arranged at the Folkmoot, 
which was held at some sacred tree or mound or stone. 



TRIBAL AND VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 199 

Here its officials were appointed, its lands distributed and 
its other business transacted. The Folkmoot was in fact a 
kind of village council, like those recently re-established, 
but with much wider powers, since it could inflict punish- 
ments for offences against its laws. 

In all the corporate life of the village the villeins took the 
main, often the sole share, the cotarii were sometimes 
allowed to assist in it, but the servus or thew was an abso- 
lute serf, and had no part whatever in the deliberations of 
the Folkmoot, however much they might affect him. The 
class of servi or theows, sprang, says Mr. Green, " mainly 
from debt or crime. Famine drove men to bend their 
heads in the evil days for meat; the debtor, unable to 
discharge his debt, flung on the ground his freeman's sword 
and spear, took up the labourer's mattock, and placed his 
head as a slave within his master's hands. The criminal, 
whose kinsfolk would not make up his fine, became a serf 
of the plaintiff or of the crown. Sometimes a father sold 
his children and wife into bondage when pressed by need. 
In any case the slave became part of the live-stock of his 
master's estate, to be willed away at death with horse and 
ox, whose pedigree was kept as carefully as his own. His 
children were bondsmen like himself, even a freeman's 
children by a slave mother inherited the slave's taint. ' Mine 
is the calf which is born of my cow ' ran an English proverb. 
It was not, indeed, slavery such as we have known in modern 
times, for stripes and bonds were rare ; if the slave was slain, 
it was by an angry blow, not by the lash. But his master 
could slay him if he would ; it was but a chattel the less. 
The slave had no place in the justice-court, no kinsmen to 
claim vengeance or guilt-fine for his wrong. If a stranger 
slew him, his lord claimed the damages ; if guilty of wrong- 
doing, his skin paid for him under his master's lash. If he 
fled he might be chased like a strayed beast, and when 
caught he might be flogged to death. If the wrong-doer 



200 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

were a woman she might be burnt." No doubt the dialogue 
of ^Eifric, in which the inquirer holds a conversation with 
a theow, represents fairly what must have been the feelings 
of so miserable a class. The inquirer asks, " What say est 
thou, ploughman ? How dost thou thy work ? " and the 
ploughman replies, " Oh, my lord, hard do I work. I go 
out at daybreak driving the oxen to field, and I yoke them 
to the plough. Nor is it ever so hard winter that I dare 
lurk at home, for fear of my lord, but the oxen yoked, and 
the ploughshare and coulter fastened to the plough, every 
day must I plough a full acre or more." " Hast thou any 
comrade ? " "I have a boy driving the oxen with an iron 
goad, who also is hoarse with cold and shouting." " What 
more dost thou in the day ? " " Verily then I do more. 
I must fill the bin of the oxen with hay, and water them, 
and carry out the dung. Ha ! ha ! Hard work it is ! be- 
cause I am not free." 

The land around the village which belonged to the villeins 
and cottars was not cut up into fields separated from one 
another by hedges as is our land now. On the contrary, 
the fields were quite open, and the separate holdings were 
divided from one another by narrow strips or balks of turf, 
so that they must have very much resembled what we are 
now beginning to be familiar with as allotment pieces, in 
the neighbourhood of many towns and villages. Roughly 
speaking each of these strips of land would be about an acre 
in size, and arranged so as to be of the most convenient 
size for ploughing. Indeed, the names of the divisions by 
which land is measured recall the primitive importance of 
the plough, for the furlong is the " furrow-long," or the 
length of the furrow which the plough made before it was 
convenient to turn it, and as this is called quarentena in 
the Latin documents of the period, we gather that it con- 
sisted of forty rods. The word rood corresponds to as 
many furrows as could be made in the breadth of a rod, 



TRIBAL AND VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 201 

and four of these rods or roods laid side by side made and 
still make up the statute acre. 

Between the ends of the strips were often little bits of 
land, filling in disused corners perhaps awkwardly situated 
for ploughing. These were called " no man's land," " any 
man's land," " Jack's piece," or, in Scotland, consecrated 
as a propitiatory offering to the devil, under the name of 
"Cloutie's croft," or "the gudeman's field." It is highly 
probable that we may find an explanation of this fact 
in the custom existing elsewhere amongst primitive people 
of leaving a patch of uncleared ground in the neigh- 
bourhood or even in the midst of land which they were 
breaking up for cultivation, such patch being intended as a 
place of refuge for the sylvan deities whose dominions had 
been invaded. 

The strips of arable land were arranged in three fields 
or areas, one of which was fallowed each year, a regular 
rotation of crops being thus insured. They were divided 
up amongst the villeins, each of whom possessed a certain 
number, not lying side by side as one would have sup- 
posed, but scattered here and there apparently at hazard 
over the three fields. The normal holding for a villein was 
called a virgate and consisted of thirty acres, ten in each of 
the three fields. Such a portion of property was also called 
a yardland. Although there seem to have been some varia- 
tions in this matter, as a rule there seem to have been four 
virgates — i.e., one hundred and twenty acres in a hide of 
land. Four of these, again, were taxed forty shillings for 
scutage or maintenance of a knight, that area of land 
bearing, therefore, the name of a knight's fee. The hide 
was also called a carucate, a word which is derived from the 
Latin caruca, a plough or plough-team. A carucate, therefore, 
being the amount of land capable of being cultivated by a 
full ox-team, which, it may parenthetically be said, consisted 
of eight beasts, may very well have varied with the nature 



202 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

of the soil and country, and this in fact we find it did. 
We have already seen that the communal officers took 
charge of the village ploughs, and the beasts which drew 
them were the property of the villeins, the size of whose 
holdings determined the number of animals which each was 
required to supply. Thus the smallest division of land 
which a villein might hold was a bovate, and as this word is 
derived from the Latin bos, an ox, it suggests the possession 
of one of these animals. Double this amount of land was a 
virgate, the normal holding of the villein, who must supply 
two oxen to the team. The hide or carucate, containing 
four virgates, would then correspond to the full team of 
eight. The same system of co-operative ploughing explains 
apparently the way in which the pieces of land came to be 
scattered over the three fields. The Welsh laws relating to 
the co-aration of the waste, or communal ploughing, throw 
considerable light on this subject. Here also the team 
consisted of eight oxen, and all those who shared in its 
benefits had to supply their quota, whether of beasts or 
implements, which were handed over to the common 
ploughman. When the ground was ploughed, the first erw 
(a piece of ground about the size of an acre) went to the 
ploughman, the second to the owner of the plough irons, the 
third to the outside sod-ox, the fourth to the outside sward- 
ox, the fifth to the driver, from the sixth to the eleventh 
inclusive to the remaining oxen, the owners of the beasts 
being in each case of course meant, and, finally, the twelfth 
was reserved for plough-bote, that is for the maintenance of 
the wood-work of the plough, and thus the "tie" of twelve 
erws was completed. In case of disputes as to the quality 
of the work done, there was a very common-sense method 
of settling the matter. " Let the erw of the ploughman be 
examined as to the depth, length, and breadth of the 
furrow, and let every one's be completed alike." It is quite 
easy to see how by such a division of the ploughed land, the 



TRIBAL AND VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 203 

owner of, say, the outside sward-ox, might have his strips 
scattered over the whole area and at some distance from one 
another. But there was yet another way in which this 
might have occurred, for, as Mr. Gomme has pointed out, in 
some cases there was an annual re-distribution of the strips 
by lot. He gives the following instance of how this took 
place up to a recent date. In the parishes of Congresbury 
and Puxton (Somersetshire) are two large pieces of common 
land, called East and West Dolemoors (from the Saxon dal, 
which means a share or portion), which were divided into 
single acres, each bearing a different and peculiar mark cut 
in the turf — such as a horn, four oxen and a mare, a pole- 
axe, cross, dung-fork, oven, duck's nest, hand-reel, and hare's 
tail. On the Saturday before old Midsummer, several pro- 
prietors of estates in the parishes of Congresbury, Puxton 
and Week St. Laurence, or their tenants, assembled on the 
commons. A number of apples were previously prepared, 
which were marked in the same manner as the above men- 
tioned acres. These were distributed by a young lad to each 
of the commoners from a bag or hat. At the close of the 
distribution each person repaired to his allotment, as 
determined by the apple, and took possession of it for the 
year. 

It will now sum up these facts as to the village, if we 
take one example of a manor, and see how it was divided, 
and for that purpose we may choose that of Westminster. 
The Domesday Book records that " in villa ubi sedet 
Ecclesia Sci. Petri (the Abbey) the abbot of the same place 
holdeth 13 J hides. There is land for 11 plough teams. 
To the demesne belong 9 hides and 1 virgate, and there are 
4 plough teams. The villeins have 9 plough teams, and one 
more might be made. There are : 

9 villani with a virgate each ; 

1 villanus with a hide ; 

9 villani with a half-virgate each ; 



204 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

i cottier with five acres ; 

41 cottiers rendering a shilling each yearly for their 
gardens ; 

There is meadow for 1 1 plough teams ; 

Pasture for the cattle of the village ; 

Wood for 100 pigs. 
There are 25 houses of the abbot's soldiers and of other 
men, who render 8s. per annum or ;£io in all. In the 
same villa Rainardus holds 3 hides of the abbot. There is 
land for two plough teams, and they are there in demesne, 
and one cottier. Wood for 100 pigs. Pasture for cattle. 
Four arpents of vineyard newly planted. All these are 
worth 60s. This land belonged and belongs to the Church 
of S. Peter." 

It is clear from this description, says Mr. Seebohm, that 
the village which nestled around the new minster just com- 
pleted by Edward the Confessor was on a manor of the 
abbot. It consisted of twenty-five houses of the abbot's 
immediate followers, nineteen homesteads of villani, forty- 
two cottages with their little gardens, and one of them with 
five acres of land. There was also the larger homestead of 
the sub-manor of the abbot's under-tenant, with a single 
cottage and a vineyard of four half-acres, recently planted. 
There was meadow enough by the river-side to make hay 
for the herd of oxen belonging to the dozen plough-teams 
of the village, and pasture for them and other cattle. 
Further round the village, in open fields, were about one 
thousand acres of arable land, mostly in the acre strips, 
lying, no doubt, in their shots or furlongs, and divided by 
green turf balks and field- ways. Lastly, surrounding the 
whole on the land side were the woods where the swine- 
herds found mast for the two hundred pigs of the place. 

The open-field system of culture existed for many years 
until it was abolished by a series of Enclosure Acts, many 
of which were passed during the end of the last and begin- 



TRIBAL AND VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 205 

ning of the present century. The Commissioners appointed 
for this purpose caused the fields to be re-divided, hedges 
and roads to be made, and re-distributed the land to those 
amongst whom it had previously been held. When it is 
known that nearly four thousand Enclosure Acts were passed 
between the years 1760 and 1844, it will be understood how 
widely prevalent the open-field system of culture must once 
have been. In the report of the Crofter Commission of 
1884 there is, as Mr. Gomme has pointed out, an interest- 
ing account of the survival of this system, not, indeed, on 
what is technically a manor, but in connection with the 
village community living on the island of Heisgeier, one of 
the Outer Hebrides. This community consisted of ten 
tenants, or more properly of twelve, since two of the ten 
have two shares each instead of one ; these may be called 
the villagers. There are as officers of the community the 
maor, the constable and the herdsman. The maor is 
appointed by the lord's factor, and acts as a kind of sub- 
factor. The constable is elected by the villagers in a most 
primitive and interesting fashion. The people meet together 
at a gathering which is called " Nabac " or neighbourliness, 
or, if presided over by the maor, it is called mod or moot. 
The place of meeting is called Cnoc na Comhairle, the 
Council Hill, or Clac na Comhairle, the Council Stone. 
The constable, having been elected, takes off his shoes and 
stockings, uncovers his head, and, bowing reverently low, 
promises in presence of heaven and earth, of God and men, 
that he will be faithful to his trust. At Hallowtide the 
villagers meet and decide upon the piece of ground within 
their mark which is to be broken up for arable cultivation, a 
different piece being selected every three years, and the old 
ground put under grazing as before. The allotment of the 
land is the next process. The constable takes a rod, and 
divides the land into equal divisions. At the boundary of 
each division he cuts a mark in the ground, which is called 



206 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

the Tore, and resembles the Government broad-arrow. A 
man, probably the herdsman, is then sent out from the 
meeting, and each of six men then put a lot into a bonnet ; 
the man sent out is then recalled, and the bonnet is handed 
to him. From this the man takes the lots and places them 
one after one on a line on the ground, the order in which 
they thus stand being the order in which the owners of the 
lots stand to one another, each man knowing his own mark. 
The two tenants who have double shares retain their two 
shares each ; the four other tenants sub-divide their divi- 
sions with four other men, whom they thus represent at the 
division. These sub-divisions are called Imirean or Iomai- 
rean, rigs or ridges, and each two tenants cast lots again for 
the sub-divided rigs. A piece of ground is then set apart 
for the herdsman, which is the outside rig bordering on the 
grazings, and further pieces of ground are set out for the 
poor. Thus we find that the system of village-community 
which existed at least through the Saxon period has made 
its influence deeply and directly felt through the whole of 
the succeeding history of the country. The open-field 
system of culture has, it is true, departed, but the garden 
allotments and the Acts which provide for them are an 
attempt to keep upon the land a class of cottars very similar 
to those of the older manor. And it has already been re- 
marked that the recently originated parish councils are the 
lineal descendants and legitimate successors of the folkmoots 
of former days. In the present chapter it has been desired 
to give some insight into the life of the village, rather than 
to discuss any of the interesting problems related to it. For 
this and other information on the subject the reader is 
advised to consult the exhaustive works of Mr. Seebohm and 
Mr. Gomme, from which, indeed, all the facts mentioned in 
this brief account have been gathered. 



CHAPTER XI 

SOME TRACES OF THE PAST RACES OF BRITAIN 

Traces in Language — Physical characteristics — Names of 
Places. 

In considering what effects the various races with which this 
book is concerned have had on the present population of 
these islands, it may be well briefly to recapitulate the 
peoples whom we have to take into account. Omitting 
all the innumerable admixtures which have taken place 
within historic times, and turning only to the earlier races, 
we have at least one non- Aryan people to deal with — namely, 
those of the Neolithic period. It may be that there are 
traces and remnants amongst us of the blood of the ancient 
cave-dweller of the rough Stone age ; but if so it may be 
said quite safely that they are unrecognisable, and there- 
fore to be neglected. Then we have Goidels, Brythons, 
Saxons, Danes and Normans all belonging to Aryan races. 
The Romans must be omitted from our calculations, for 
though it would be unsafe to say that they have left no 
ethnological legacy behind them, from the nature of their 
occupation of the country it cannot have been equal in 
share to that of the other races, and is apparently un- 
traceable. To attempt a linguistic inquiry as to the share 
of the different races in the production of the present 
population is no part of the intention of this book, nor 
would such an attempt be very profitable. In his essay 
on " Fixed Points in English Ethnology," the late Professor 



208 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

Huxley shows how false any estimate based upon the 
present speech must be. "In Gaul," he writes, "the im- 
ported Teutonic dialect has been completely overpowered 
by the more or less modified Latin, which it found already 
in possession ; and what Teutonic blood there may be in 
modern Frenchmen is not adequately represented in their 
language. In Britain, on the contrary, the Teutonic dialects 
have overpowered the pre-existing forms of speech, and 
the people are vastly less Teutonic than their language. 
Whatever may have been the extent to which the Celtic- 
speaking population of the eastern half of Britain was 
trodden out and supplanted by the Teutonic-speaking 
Saxons and Danes, it is quite certain that no considerable 
displacement of the Celtic-speaking people occurred in 
Cornwall, Wales or the Highlands of Scotland; and that 
nothing approaching to the extinction of that people took 
place in Devonshire, Somerset or the western moiety of 
Britain generally. Nevertheless, the fundamentally Teu- 
tonic English language is now spoken throughout Britain, 
except by an insignificant fraction of the population in 
Wales and the Western Highlands. But it is obvious that 
this fact affords not the slightest justification for the com- 
mon practice of speaking of the present inhabitants of 
Britain as an Anglo-Saxon people. It is, in fact, just as 
absurd as the habit of talking of the French people as a 
Latin race because they speak a language which is, in 
the main derived from Latin. And the absurdity becomes 
the more patent when those who have no hesitation in 
calling a Devonshire man or a Cornish man an Anglo- 
Saxon would think it ridiculous to call a Tipperary man 
by the same title, though he and his forefathers may have 
spoken English for as long a time as the Cornish man." In 
attributing small value to linguistic evidence as a means of 
help in unravelling the tangled skein of English ethnology, 
it must not be supposed that sufficient importance has not 



TRACES OF PAST RACES OF BRITAIN 209 

been attached to the efforts in this direction of the Dialect 
Society, which promise some day to throw light upon the 
subject ; but it is perhaps not unfair to say that the time is 
not yet come when a linguistic classification can be fully 
realised. 

Two curious linguistic relics there are, which may be men- 
tioned, of the influence of the Celt on his Saxon neighbour. 
The first is that of the rhyming score, which is met with in 
Scotland,Yorkshire, Northumberland, and in several western 
and central counties. It is a method adopted by shepherds 
of counting up to twenty in words which to them are only a 
meaningless jingle, but which, when examined, turn out to be 
nothing else than the Welsh numerals up to that amount. The 
explanation of this curious custom probably is that in earlier 
times the British slaves of Saxon lords were in the habit of 
thus reckoning up their flocks and that their numerals 
became converted into a kind of jingle by their fellows of 
English birth, being handed down by them to their 
descendants, who have lost all idea of the real meaning of 
the words which they use. The other instance is that of 
the local word ceffyl, a horse, used in Worcestershire, 
Herefordshire and some other counties. This is a pure 
Welsh word, nor need one feel much surprise at finding it 
in use in counties where the Saxon and the Brython must 
have had many dealings in horseflesh. But what is signifi- 
cant is the manner in which it is used, for it is employed 
only for horses of the poorest type, or as a word of abuse 
from one person to another, as when one says " you great 
keffil," meaning you clumsy idiot. This mode of employ- 
ment shows very well the feeling which the Saxon entertained 
for the Celt, a feeling of contempt, which led him, whilst 
calling his own steed a horse, to name that of his British 
neighbour a kerlfil, and imagine that by so doing he 
disparaged it. That this feeling was returned with interest 
there can be no doubt, and in proof of it the following 

o 



210 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

quatrain may be quoted, which, though Irish in origin and 
therefore giving the view of the Goidel, no doubt represented 
that of his brother the Brython with equal accuracy. 
Describing the characteristics of different races the bard 
exclaims : 

For acuteness and valour, the Greeks, 

For excessive pride, the Romans, 

For dulness, the creeping Saxons, 

For beauty and amourousness, the Gaedhils. 

The most valuable data to hand for solving the ethno- 
logical problem are those afforded by the laborious observa- 
tions of Dr. Beddoes, of which large use has been made in the 
following sketch. In the first place, it is clear, as Mr. Elton 
points out, that in many parts of Ireland there are remnants 
of a short, black-haired stock, probably of pre-Celtic origin. 
The tribal names of these peoples are in many cases taken 
from words for the Darkness and the Mist, and their 
physical appearance is quite different from that of the tall, 
light Celts. The same thing has been observed in the 
Scottish Highlands, and in the Western Isles, where the 
people have a " strange foreign look," and are dark-skinned, 
dark-haired, dark-eyed and small in stature. Campbell, in 
his " West Highland Tales," speaking of the short, dark 
natives of Barra, says : " Behind the fire sat a girl with one 
of those strange foreign faces which are occasionally to be 
seen in the Western Isles, a face which reminded me of the 
Nineveh sculptures and of faces seen in St. Sebastian. 
Her hair was as black as night, her clear eyes glittered 
through the peat-smoke. Her complexion was dark and 
her features so unlike those who sat about her that I asked 
if she were a native of the island and learned that she was 
a Highland girl." Again, in many parts of England and 
Wales the people are short and swarthy, with black hair 
and eyes, and with long, narrow heads. This is found to 
be the case not only in the ancient Siluria (comprising the 



TRACES OF PAST RACES OF BRITAIN 211 

modern counties of Glamorgan, Brecknock, Monmouth, 
Radnor and Hereford), but in several districts in the fen- 
country, and in the south-western counties of Cornwall and 
Devon, with parts of Gloucester, Wilts and Somerset. The 
same fact has been noticed in the Midland counties, in 
districts round Derby, Stamford, Leicester and' Lough- 
borough • where we might have expected to find nothing 
but a population with light hair and eyes, and where " the 
names of the towns and villages show that the Saxon and 
Danish conquerors occupied the district in overwhelming 
numbers." That such people may be the representatives of 
the Neolithic inhabitants of these islands is at least possible, 
if not highly probable. 

When we come to try and decide the exact nature of the 
population of any given district we approach a most difficult 
and unsatisfactory problem. That there are differences in 
physiognomy and in bodily characteristics must have been 
noticed by any traveller through the country who has taken 
the trouble to keep his eyes open. Such an observant 
traveller may find himself remarking with Mr. Hardy that 
some flexible mouth which he has seen never " came over 
from Sleswig with a band of Saxon pirates, whose lips met 
like the two halves of a muffin," but if he tries to push his 
investigations further and say where it did come from he is at 
once encompassed round about with innumerable difficulties. 

It will, therefore, only be attempted to point out in a very 
general way some indications, which Dr. Beddoes thinks he 
has been able to perceive, as to the nature of the population 
of some of the districts of England. In the Shetlands, for 
example, the population is unquestionably largely Norse in 
its origin, though there are other elements mixed with it. 
In the Lewis there are three types : the large, fair, comely 
Norse type, said to exist almost pure at Ness in the north part 
of the island ; the short, thick-set, snub-nosed, dark-haired, 
often even dark-eyed race, which Dr. Beddoes thinks may 



212 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

be possibly Finnish, whose centre is at Barvas; and the 
West Highland type, which has gradually filtered in, and is 
usually characterised by an athletic figure of medium 
height, a bony face, long sinuous pointed nose, grey eyes 
and dark hair. The Norsemen have also had their influence 
on the Hebrides and the Isle of Man, in which there are 
many Norse names, especially that of Sneefell, the highest 
mountain, which is purely Norse. Indeed there is another 
instance of the fact constantly under our eyes, though 
recognised by few, and that is the title of the Bishop of 
Sodor and Man. The Hebrides were called the Sudreyjar, 
or southern islands, by the Norsemen, and the See which 
they founded was united with that of Man in the eleventh 
century, and made dependent on the Archbishop of 
Drontheim in Norway, by whom, till 1334, the Episcopi 
Sudorenses were always consecrated. The Bishop of Sodor 
and Man still retains his titular supremacy over those 
southern islands which have long ceased to have any 
other connection with him. Beyond this influence Man is 
strongly Goidelic, as is shown by the tongue, the people's 
names and their ideas. These instances of comparatively 
isolated spots have been cited, in order to show how much 
admixture there is of races even in those districts where we 
should expect to find the strain most pure. Even in 
Aranmore, an extremely isolated island on the west coast of 
Ireland, Professor Haddon found a mixed race, some of the 
islanders even having French blood in their veins. It will 
not be difficult from this to understand how great the 
admixture of races must be in places where for centuries 
there have been so many and so various currents of popula- 
tion constantly ebbing and flowing. Speaking generally we 
may say that we find the largest amount of Celtic blood on 
the western side of the island and notably in Wales and 
Cornwall, and that of the rest we find the Danish influence 
most marked in those parts of the country which are to the 



TRACES OF PAST RACES OF BRITAIN 213 

north of the Watling Street and towards the east coast. 
But even here great limitations must be placed. Some 
counties were much more completely colonised by the 
Danes than others, and of these Leicester may serve as an 
example. Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire are Anglo- 
Danish, the latter element being particularly strong in 
Lincolnshire as far as to the border of the Fens. The 
northern part of Cambridgeshire, known as the Isle of Ely, 
is said to contain a considerable streak of British blood, a 
fact which may be explained by what we know of the 
inaccessibility of its isles and deep marshes and waters at a 
much later period. 

Norfolk and Suffolk, on the other hand, are more Anglian 
than Danish or British. On the other side of Watling 
Street the amount of Celtic blood mixed with the Saxon 
varies very much in different parts. In Warwickshire, for 
example, there is apparently a very strong admixture of 
Celtic blood, a fact which has been dwelt upon by those 
who attribute a strong Celtic strain as no inconsiderable 
factor in the genius of Shakespeare. Nor is it difficult to 
understand the fact of this admixture, in that district, for we 
know that the great Forest of Arden, which covered by far 
the greater part of the county, was one of the fastnesses 
occupied by the fugitive Britons, long after they had been 
dislodged by their Saxon adversaries from more accessible 
spots. In fact, Dr. Beddoes thinks that it was a band of 
the Britons of this district which united with Ceolric, the 
Saxon king, at the battle of Wanborough, in 591. If this 
be so it would show that they were living on terms of 
neutrality, if not of friendship, with the Saxon invaders, and 
under these circumstances, they may well have increased 
their numbers and by intermarriage with their alien neigh- 
bours have introduced a strong infusion of their blood into 
the dwellers in the Arden district. East Worcestershire was 
one of Ceawlin's colonies, so that there is a large amount of 



2i 4 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

Saxon blood there. Derbyshire and East Staffordshire are 
Anglian, and so are large parts of Cheshire and Shropshire. 
But on the Dee and along the west of Shropshire the 
British population must have formed a considerable element, 
especially in isolated districts like that of Clun, where many 
of the names are still Welsh. The same remark applies to 
the whole of Herefordshire, of which, indeed, Archeafield, 
the trans-Wye country, and some portions of the west 
border, beyond OrTa's Dyke, were never colonised by the 
Saxons. Dr. Beddoes particularly insists on the long con- 
tinued reflux of the Welsh over the whole of the Marches, 
which has rendered the preponderance of their type, 
especially amongst the lower classes, very conspicuous. The 
influence of this double race in the double town of Shrews- 
bury has been alluded to in another chapter. Dr. Beddoes 
considers that in the central part of Oxfordshire the West- 
Saxon type is very strong, and hence, extending up the 
valley of the Thames, it affects a great part of the Cots- 
wolds, the hill country of Gloucestershire, and even the 
Severn valley as far as the Severn. The city of Gloucester 
is supposed to have survived its conquest by Ceawlin, and 
its markets and streets stand pretty much on their original 
sites. To the Forest of Dean, the part of the county 
beyond the river, applies what has been said of Hereford- 
shire. The peculiar customs of the miners of that district 
date back to a Roman, or perhaps even to a pre-Roman 
period, for it was very early an important mining centre, and 
the physical type of the inhabitants does not seem to have 
appreciably altered. The hair is generally dark, the head 
long, the cheek-bones prominent. The Severn, adds the 
same writer, is a distinct ethnological frontier; the con- 
trast between the country people in the Eastgate side of 
Gloucester on a market day, and those who come across 
the bridge from the Forest side, is extremely striking. In the 
north and east of Kent Teutonic types preponderate, with 



TRACES OF PAST RACES OF BRITAIN 215 

light or brown hair ; one in particular, with very prominent 
profile, is claimed by some observers as Jutic, and is said to 
be frequent also in the Isle of Wight and the Meon district, 
near Southampton. There is more British influence in 
Romney Marsh and the neighbouring part of the Weald. 
Chichester and Suffolk generally are, as may be supposed, 
strongly Saxon. The type possesses regular features, 
elliptical head and face, brows moderately arched, nose 
straight, often rounded or bulbous at the point, mouth well 
moulded, complexion fair and transparent, eyes well open, 
iris seldom large, of a beautiful clear blue, but sometimes 
brown or hazel, hair flaxen or brown of various shade, seldom 
bright, curly or abundant. Hampshire also, another centre 
of Saxon colonisation, bears witness to the fact by the blonde 
character of the population. 

In Devon, and still more so in Cornwall, we find more and 
more traces of British influence. Thus, here is a mixture 
of races in all parts, and, to conclude this sketch, it may be 
added that the conquests of Ida, the Flame-Bearer, and the 
Bernicians, filled the Lowland parts of Scotland with Saxons, 
so much so, that to this day the English tongue is preserved 
with greater purity in what is called Southern Scotland than 
in any other part of the kingdom. From what has been 
said it will be understood that in many parts of the country 
there have been Celtic influences at work from the beginning, 
modifying the purity of race of the Saxon colonists, and, in 
addition to these, in estimating the real nature of the race, 
the return wave of Celts, which has been so long spreading 
over the country, must be taken into account. When these 
two sources of Celtic influence have been properly appraised, 
it will be seen that the population of England is very far 
from being as Anglo-Saxon as it is popularly supposed to 
be. In fact it may with reason be said that the families in 
England which do not contain more than a streak of Celtic 
blood must be comparatively very few. 



216 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

The evidence which is gained from the names of places 
tells the same tale of the occupation of the country by 
various races. Of the pre-Aryan inhabitants of the country 
it cannot be said that there are any certain traces of this 
kind, but of both branches of the Celts we find them in 
abundance. Taking first the Goidelic wing, and choosing 
examples mainly from England, we have the river names 
derived from the Gaelic word uisge, water, a word which 
we are most familiar with under its very slightly altered form 
of whisky. From this word come the Esk, the Usk and 
the Ouse, also the Exe, for Exeter was the Isca Damno- 
niorum of the Romans, and the first part of its name was the 
Latinised form of uisge. As might be supposed the greater 
number of Celtic names in England are Brythonic, but 
Canon Taylor has pointed out that there is a thin stream of 
Goidelic names which extends across the island from the 
Thames to the Mersey, such as Dunmow, Ouse, Ben 
Rhydding, which, he thinks, may indicate the route by 
which the Gael traversed the country as he was driven west- 
ward by the invading Brython. The last-mentioned name 
reminds us that Ben is the characteristic Goidelic name for 
a mountain, and is met with in numerous instances in Scot- 
land, the land of the Gael. Pen, on the other hand, is the 
equivalent Brythonic word, and occurs with frequency in 
Wales. The leading Brythonic word for a river is afon, 
meaning water. This word forms the name of several rivers 
in England, such as that which runs through Stratford-on- 
Avon, and it is quite easy to see how several isolated bands 
of Brythons might each describe the river of their own 
district as "The Water." In Wales the word is found in 
its proper place as the prefix to some specific name, such as 
Afon Llugwy or Afon Lledr. In England we speak of the 
River Avon, one of various pleonasms which have arisen 
by the re-christening of a place by successive occupants 
ignorant of the meaning of the term which they found in 



TRACES OF PAST RACES OF BRITAIN 217 

use on their arrival. A good instance of this is that of the 
hill at the head of the Yarrow, which is named Mount Ben- 
jerlaw. The original Celtic name was Ben-yair, the moun- 
tain of the Yarrow, to this the Saxons added their word 
hlaw, also meaning a hill, and finally in Norman times the 
Latin word mons gave it the prefix of mount. So that the 
whole name when analysed means, hill (Norman) hill 
(Celtic) Yarrow hill (Saxon). Another Brythonic word, 
dun, a hill fortress, which in Wales is Dinas, enters into the 
formation of some names and did so in Roman times, as in 
the case of Dunum, and Camulodunum. Cwm, combe, 
a valley, another Brythonic word, occurs frequently in 
Somerset and Devon, where, as we have seen, Celtic in- 
fluence was always strong, and is met with as The Cwms in 
Shropshire, in the name of the valley east of Caer Caradoc. 
Canon Taylor points out that the words for church form 
a good index of colonisation, when they enter, as they so 
frequently do, into the names of places. In Goidelic this is 
kill, a word met with in no less than 1400 Irish places, of 
which Kilkenny, the Church of St. Canice, will serve for an 
example. The same word is met with in Scotland with 
considerable frequency and also in Wales, though, as every 
one knows, the Brythonic term llan is the more common 
prefix in that country. The Anglo-Saxon circe becomes 
softened into church, but as that word is also English it is 
no test of colonisation. The Danes hardened the same 
word into kirk, and that prefix is met with in sixty-eight 
cases in the Danish district, as for example in Kirby, the 
church village, and Kirk Oswald, though it is scarcely ever 
met with in parts untouched by the influence of the Danes. 
Amongst Saxon words that of ton, the palisaded village, and 
burh or borough, the house of the strong man, occur with 
great frequency, though both of them are used as suffixes 
and prefixes to towns which no longer preserve the condi- 
tions of the places to which they were originally assigned. 



218 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 

Roman names have almost entirely disappeared, though 
Spinse seems to linger under the form of Speen and Castra 
Legionum under that of Caerleon. But the word castra 
under one or other of its corruptions enables us to recognise 
many places which were originally Roman cities or settle- 
ments. 

Canon Taylor has drawn attention to the curious modifi- 
cations of the word castra, which has been altered in different 
ways in consonance with the dialectic peculiarities of different 
parts of the kingdom. Throughout the regions of Essex, 
Sussex, Wessex, and other Saxon districts the form Chester 
is usual, as in Colchester, Godmanchester, Grantchester, 
Rochester and Winchester. As we pass from the Saxon to 
the Anglian district we find Chester replaced by caster. 
In one instance at least the two forms are met with in close 
proximity. Northamptonshire, which is Danish, is separated 
from Huntingdonshire, which is Saxon, by the river Nen. 
On the Saxon side of the river we have the village of 
Chesterton, confronted on the opposite side by the town of 
Castor, both names recording the existence of the Roman 
station of Durobrivse which guarded the bridge over the river. 
Throughout the Anglian and Danish districts generally we 
find the term caster, as at Doncaster, Lancaster and Caistor. 
As we pass from East Anglia to Mercia, which, though 
mainly Anglian, was subject to a certain amount of Saxon 
influence, we find the word becoming cester, which is inter- 
mediate between the Saxon Chester and the Anglian caster. 
The e is retained, but the h is omitted, and there is a strong 
tendency to further elision, as in the cases of Alcester, 
Worcester and Gloucester. Beyond the Tees, where the 
Danish and Mercian influence ceases, we find the Saxon form 
Chester again in use, as in Lanchester and Chester-le-Street. 
Towards the Welsh frontier the c or ch becomes an x, 
and the tendency to elision becomes very great, as atWroxeter, 
and Exeter, really (and in Camden's time actually) Execester. 



TRACES OF PAST RACES OF BRITAIN 219 

These names on the Welsh frontiers exhibit a gradual 
approximation to the form which exists where the Brythonic 
speech survived. Here the / also disappears and we get 
the word caer as in Caer Caradoc, Caerleon and Caernarvon. 

Perhaps the most important Danish contribution to place 
names is the suffix by. By or byr originally denoted a 
single dwelling, or a single farm, and we have it still in 
Scotland as the name of a cow-stall. By degrees, like the 
suffixes ton and ham, it came to have a larger meaning and 
denoted a village. Instances of this occur in the words 
Grimsby, Whitby, Derby and Ashby, and a group of such 
names testifies to the strong Danish influence which formerly 
prevailed in the Wirral peninsula. Lastly, a few of the 
Norman names may be mentioned, which marked the in- 
fluence of the last conquerors of England. Such are 
Malpas in Cheshire, Beaudesert in the Forest of Arden, 
Beaumont in Oxfordshire, and the Abbeys of Beaulieu, 
Jervaulx, Rievaulx and Gracedieu. 

It is no part of the object of this book to deal with the 
influences of the various races which have come under con- 
sideration, on the national literature and character. To 
attempt any task of this kind would demand an extension 
of its limits beyond those which have been contemplated. 
But those who would wish to find a succinct account of this 
part of the subject can with great advantage consult Mr. 
Arnold's book on Celtic literature, where they will find the 
subject dealt with in that critic's most luminous manner. 



APPENDIX A 

LIST OF PLACES IN ENGLAND ILLUSTRATING 
OBJECTS DESCRIBED IN THE TEXT 

This very imperfect list is inserted in the hope that it may be 
of service to those who wish to study practically some of the 
objects described in the preceding pages. In a few instances, 
of which mention will be made, archaeological surveys of 
counties have been made and published by experts in the 
pages of Archceologia. When this work has been carried out 
for the entire country, it will be possible to compile a far more 
complete and accurate list than the following. The atten- 
tion of readers may also be called to the lists of Roman 
Remains in England which will be found in the pages of the 
Archceological Review. Local archaeologists are requested to 
pardon the errors of omission and commission which they 
may find, and to communicate the same to the author, to be 
incorporated in a second edition, should such be called for. 

Bedford. — Earthworks {Brit.), Risinghoe Castle, Cainhoe 
Castle, Maiden Bower (Dunstable), Titternhoe Castle, 
Wahid's Bank ; Saxon cemetery, Sandy. 

Berkshire.— Remains of chambered barrow, Weyland's 
Smith's Cave (close to the Icknield Street, and in the 
neighbourhood of many barrows, and of the well-known 
"White Horse " and Blowing-Stone); British village, 
Stanlake; Earthworks {Brit.), Ufnngton Castle ; {Rom.), 
Grimsby Castle (Newbury) ; Saxon cemeteries, Abing- 



222 APPENDIX 

don, Fulford. Museum (containing specimens from 
Silchester) at Reading. 

Buckinghamshire. — Earthworks (Brit.), Kimble Castle 
(Ellesborough), Cholesbury; Saxon cemetery, Dinton. 

Cambridgeshire. — Earthworks {Rom.), Chesterton; (Sax.), 
Orwell, Wilbraham ; Dykes, Devil's, Balsham, Brent 
Ditch, Haydon Ditch. Museum at Cambridge. 

Cheshire. — Earthworks (Brit.), Bucton (Stalybridge), Kels- 
borough; (Sax.?), Eddisbury ; General Roman anti- 
quities, and Museum at Chester. 

Cornwall. — Dolmens, numerous, the best are : Trevethy 
Quoit, Zennor do., Pendarves do., Chun do., Lanyon do. ; 
Stone circles or avenues, The Hurlers (Liskeard), 
Boskednan circle, Nine Maidens (Boscawen), Dawns 
Maen ; the Crick stone (Lanyon) is a holed stone ; 
Cliff castles with loose stone ramparts, Treryn 
Dinas (near the Land's End, and containing the Logan 
stone), Castel-an-Dinas, and Chun Castle ; Earthworks 
and circular hut-dwellings, numerous. 

Cumberland (For full list see Archceologia, vol. 53, pt. ii. 
p. 489). — Stone circles, Penrith, Castle Rigg (Keswick), 
Dean Moor, Whitbeck, Burn Moor ; Pit dwellings, 
Castle Carrock, Denton ; The Roman wall and its 
forts ; Saxon moated mounds in various places, e.g., 
Bleatarn ; and Earthworks at Egremont Castle. 

Derbyshire. — Caves, Poole's Cavern at Buxton, Robin 
Hood's, Church Hole, Cresswell Crags; Stone circles, 
Arbor Low, Nine Ladies' circle, Stanton Moor, Hob 
Hurst's Hut, Baslow, Bakewell ; Earthworks (Brit.), 
Melandra, Mouslow ; Saxon cemeteries, Cowlon, 
Standlow. 

Devonshire.— Caves, Kent's Hole, Torquay, Brixham ; 
Stone circles, Grey Wethers, Gidleigh (Dartmoor), 
Merivale, do. (also an avenue and dolmen), Scor Hill 
Down, do. (avenue), Cas Tor, do., Spinster's Rock 
(dolmen), Drewsteignton ; Bridge over East Dart, at 
Portbridge; Villages (Brit.), GrimspOund (Dartmoor) 
and elsewhere ; Earthworks, Prestonbury Castle (Dart- 
moor), Sidbury, and Henbury Castles (Sidmouth). 



APPENDIX 223 

Dorsetshire. — Earthworks (Brit.), Maiden Castle (Dor- 
chester), Hod Hill, Badbury Rings, Eggardon, Rawlsbury 
(on Bnlbarrow), and many others; Villages (Brit.), 
Woodcuts, Turnworth, and many others; the Cerne 
giant, near Cerne Abbas (possibly Celtic work) ; Roman 
remains at Dorchester and Wareham (the latter altered 
by later races) ; Pavement, near Weymouth. Museums 
at Dorchester and Farnham (General Pitt- Rivers 
Museum). 

Durham. — Cave, Heathery Burn (where many bronze 
implements have been found), Lanchester, a Roman 
station, altars from which are in the Chapter Library at 
Durham ; Saxon cemetery at Castle Eden. 

Essex.— Deneholes (remarkable pits in the earth) are found 
in this county; Colchester, general Roman remains. 
The Bartlow Hills, Roman tumuli. Museum at Saffron 
Walden. 

Gloucester.— Long barrows at Uley, Nether Swell, Bellas 
Knap (Winchcombe) ; Earthworks, Kemerton Camp 
(Bredon Hill), and many others on Cotswolds ; general 
Roman remains at Cirencester (Museum) ; Villas at 
Woodchester, Chedworth (with Museum), and Spoonley; 
Earthworks at Godwin's Castle (Painswick) ; Saxon 
cemetery at Fairford; remarkable Anglo-Saxon 
chapel at Deerhurst. 

Hampshire. — Earthworks (Brit.), St. Catherine's Hill 
(Winchester), Beacon, and Ladle Hills (Kingsclere), 
Quarley Hill (Grateley), Buckland Rings (Lymington) 
and elsewhere ; general Roman remains at Por- 
chester, Silchester (small Museum) ; Villas at Caris- 
brooke and Brading (Isle of Wight) ; Earthwork, 
Egbury Castle ; Saxon earthwork, Hengistbury 
(Christchurch ?) ; Cemetery, Chessel Down (Isle of 
Wight). (Note : Objects from Silchester at Reading 
Museum.) 

Hereford. — Cave, King Arthur's Cave (near Symond's 
Yat) ; Dolmen, King Arthur's Seat (Dorstone) ; Earth- 
works, Croft Ambrey, Camp on Herefordshire Beacon 
(Malvern), Wall Hills, Ledbury; Roman vallum and 



224 APPENDIX 

ditch at Leintwardine, Camp at Brandon (near same 
place), Offa's Dyke. Museum at Hereford. 

Hertfordshire (For full list see Archceologia, vol. 53, p. 245). 
— Earthworks (Brit.), Aubury Camp (Redbourn), 
Thesfield ; general Roman remains at St. Albans ; 
Camps at Royston, Thesfield, Kilsmore Bank, Cheshunt ; 
Cemetery at Littlington (Royston) ; The Grimsdyke. 

Huntingdonshire. — Roman camps at Alwalton, Earith, 
and Chesterton. 

Kent (For full list seeArchczologia, vol. 51, p. 447). — Dolmen, 
Kit's Coty House (Aylesford) ; Stone circle at Adding- 
ton ; other megalithic remains at Aylesford, Addington, 
and Coldrum ; British camp, Darenth ; general Roman 
remains at Richborough, Dover (Museum), and Lymne ; 
Cemeteries at Canterbury and Chart ; walled do., 
Loose; Camps, Roman Codde (Kingsdown), Queens- 
borough ; numerous Saxon cemeteries, of which that 
at Osengal is the most celebrated. 

Lancashire.— Caves, Grange-over-Sands, Kirkhead (Cart- 
mel) ; Stone circle, Lowick ; Roman camp, Dalton ; 
Moated mound, Aldington. For list of objects in 
northern part of county see Archceologia, vol. 53, p. 531. 

Leicestershire. — Stone Circle and Barrows, near High 
Tor, Charnwood Forest ; Roman wall, at Leicester 
(Museum in same town) ; Saxon cemeteries at Ingarsby 
and Bellerden. 

Lincolnshire. — Roman gate and general antiquities at 
Lincoln (Museum). 

Middlesex. — The reader will scarcely require to be reminded 
of the collections in the British Museum. Indications as 
to the position of the Roman remains in London will be 
found in the guides to that city. 

Monmouthshire. — General Roman remains and amphi- 
theatre, at Caerleon-on-Usk (Museum). 

Norfolk. — Pit dwellings, between Sherringham and Wey- 
bourne ; Lake dwellings, Wretham, near Thetford ; 
Roman earthworks, Castle Acre (Caistor), Burgh 
Castle, and others. Museum at Norwich. 

Northamptonshire. — Earthworks (Brit.), Castle Dykes 



APPENDIX 225 

(Farthington), Hunsborough, Dane's Camp (Harding- 
stone) ; Roman, Borough Hill, Irchester, Bnrg Hill 
(Towcester), afterwards used by the Saxons, Castor. 
Museum at Northampton. 

Northumberland. — Cromlech at Lordingshaws ; Earth- 
works (Brit.), Old Rothbury camp, Bywell, do., Chester 
Hill, do. (Belford), Easington, and Spindleston (the last 
three all afterwards modified by Romans) ; the Roman 
wall, forts, and earthworks; Roman remains at 
Newcastle-on-Tyne (Museum) ; remains at Hexham 
Church; Piers of Roman bridge over Tyne, near 
Belfield. Museum at Alnwick Castle. 

Nottinghamshire. — Camp in Sherwood Forest. 

Oxfordshire. — Stone circle, Rollright; also dolmen, and 
at Enstone (Hoarstone) ; the Devil's Quoits at Stanton 
Harcourt; remains of a Roman villa at Northlegh. 

Rutland. — Roman camp at Great Chesterton. 

Shropshire. — Stone circles, Marshpool, Mitchell's Fold ; 
and a third, near Stapeley Hill ; Menhir, near Clun, and 
on Clee Hill; Earthworks (Brit.), Caer Caradoc, 
Stretton, and do. Knighton, Bodbury, Bury Ditches, &c. 
(Rom. ?), Norton Camp, Craven Arms, Nordy Bank 
(Clee) ; remains of Roman city of Uriconium ; 
Mines at Llanymynech and Snead. Museum at Shrews- 
bury. 

Somersetshire. — Caves at Wookey, Burrington and Cheddar 
(at Gough's Cave, Cheddar, is an interesting collection of 
objects, of Stone, Bronze, and Romano- British periods, 
which have been found during excavations) ; Stone 
circle, Stanton Drew; Chambered barrow, Wellow 
(Stoney Littleton) ; Hut circles, Brent Knoll, Worle 
Hill, Dolebury ; Lake village, Meare, near Glastonbury ; 
Camps, Dunster, Cadbury (Clevedon), Maesbury, Ham- 
don, Castle Neroche, Dolebury, Worlebury, and others ; 
Bridge over Barle, Tarr Steps, near Winsford ; general 
Roman remains at Bath, including Roman bath, 
Museum; Roman camp, near Dunster, Masbury and 
Hamdon camps were altered by the Romans; Villa at 
Wellow; Roman amphitheatre, Charterhouse-on- 



az6 APPENDIX 

Mendip. Museums at Taunton and Glastonbury (the 
latter containing an interesting collection of objects 
from the lake village at Meare). 

Staffordshire. — Thor's cave, near Ashbourne ; Pit 
dwellings, Wetton, Cauldron, Alstonefield, Stourton, 
Ham; Earthworks at Knave's Castle, near Lichfield, 
and elsewhere ; Saxon low, near Tittensor. 

Suffolk. — Flint quarries, Grimes Graves, Brandon ; Lake 
dwellings, Barton Mere (Bury St. Edmunds) ; Roman 
tumuli, Eastlow Hills (Rougham). 

Surrey. — Earthworks (Brit.), Cardinal's Cap (White Hill, 
near Caterham) ; Caesar's Camp, Wimbledon. 

Sussex.— Earthworks and flint-mines, Cissbury (near 
Worthing) ; Roman villa, Bignor ; Saxon cemetery, 
High Down. 

Warwickshire.— Kingstone, Menhir, at Rollright; Camp, 
The Mount, near Shirley; Earthworks (Rom.?), Har- 
borough Banks, Oldbury, near Mancetter (Manduessedum, 
where Roman relics and a pottery station have been 
found). 

Westmoreland (For full list see Archczologia, vol. 53, 
p. 521). — Stone circles, Shap, Crosby Ravenhurst, 
Ravenstonedale ; Earthworks, Ashby Scar; camp, 
tumulus, and village, Harbynrigg ; (Rom.), Ambleside, 
Maiden Castle, on Stainmore ; (Sax.), Kendal Castle. 

Wiltshire. — Long barrows, Lugbury (and dolmen), West 
Kennett, the King Barrow, near Boreham ; Dolmen, the 
Devil's Den, Clatford Bottom, near Marlborough ; Hut 
circles, Fisherton, and elsewhere ; megalithic re- 
mains, Stonehenge (near which are very many barrows 
and earthworks), Avebury (Silbury Hill and barrows 
in neighbourhood) ; Earthworks, very numerous, e.g. 
(Brit.), Barbury, Chisenbury, Yarnbury, Scratchbury, and 
Battlebury camps ; (Rom.), Old Sarum, Knooke, Round- 
way Castles, Mildenhall (Cunetio) ; The Wansdyke ; 
remarkable Anglo-Saxon church at Bradford-on-Avon. 
Museums at Devizes and Salisbury (the latter containing 
a magnificent collection of pre-historic objects). 
Worcestershire.— Earthworks (Brit.), Cadbury Banks, 



APPENDIX 227 

Woodbury (?), Wall Hill (Thornbury) ; (Rom.), Kempsey. 
Museum, Worcester. 

Yorkshire. — Victoria cave, near Settle, and others in neigh- 
hood, Craven, Kirkdale; megalithic remains, the 
Devil's Arrows, near Boroughbridge ; Menhir, the Rud- 
stone, near Bridlington ; Pit dwellings, Danby Moor, 
Egton Grange, Killing Pits (near Gothland), Harwood 
Dale, Ingleborough ; circular earthworks, numerous, 
e.g., Blois Hall, Thornborough, Almonbury, near Hudders- 
field; General Roman remains, including the mul- 
tangular tower and wall at York ; also Roman 
remains at Tadcaster and Aldborough. Museums, 
York, Leeds, Scarborough, Whitby. 

Wales, N. — Caves, Perthi Chwareu (Denbighshire), Cefn, 
near St, Asaph ; Stone circle, Penmaenmawr ; Dol- 
mens, twenty-eight in Anglesea, of which the best are, 
Plas Newydd, Bryn Celliden, and Bodowyr; Cairn or 
carnedd in district of Llyfni, near Clynnog; many 
earthworks, e.g., Moel-y-Caer (Flint), Caer Gybi, Port- 
hamel, Bwedd Arthur (Anglesey). 

Wales, S. — Caves, Long Hole (Glamorgan), Paviland (do.), 
Hoyle (Tenby, Pemb.) ; Dolmens, Pentre Ifan (Pem- 
broke), Arthur's Quoit (Gower, Glamorgan) ; numerous 
menhirion and many camps, e.g., Ludbrook (Chep- 
stow) ; Roman amphitheatre, &c, Caerleon ; camp 
at Penlan, near St. David's. 

Isle of Man. — Long barrow at Ballaglass ; Stone circle 
near Corra, in Maughold ; Pit dwellings, Cronk Airey ; 
circular huts of stone, Glen Darragh, Mount Murray. 



APPENDIX B 

LIST OF BOOKS WHICH MAY BE CONSULTED 
IN CONNECTION WITH THE SUBJECTS 
DEALT WITH IN THE PRECEDING PAGES 

Dealing chiefly with the Stone Period : — 

i. " Cave Hunting." By Prof. Boyd- Dawkins. Macmillan 
&Co. 

2. " Early Man in Britain." Same author and publisher. 

3. " Prehistoric Times." By Sir John Lubbock. Williams 

& Norgate. 

4. "Ancient Stone Implements." By Sir John Evans. 

Longmans. 

5. " Man before Metals." By N. Joly. Kegan Paul. 

6. " British Barrows." By Canon Greenwell. 

7. " Flint Chips." By E. T. Steevens. Bell & Daldy. 

8. "Grave-Mounds and their Contents." By H. Jewitt. 

Groombridge & Sons. 

Dealing chiefly with the Bronze Period : — 
The works of Dawkins and Lubbock as above. 

1. " Ancient Bronze Implements." By Sir John Evans. 

Longmans. 

2. "Ancient Scottish Lake Dwellings." By Munro. 

Douglas. 

3. " Lake Dwellings." By Keller. 

4. " Celtic Britain." By Prof. Rhys. S.P.C.K. 

5. " Stonehenge and its Earthworks." E. Barlby. D. 

Nutt. 



APPENDIX 229 

Dealing chiefly with the Roman Period : — 

1. " Roman Britain." By Preb. Scarth. S.P.C.K. 

2. " Roman Remains." Ed. by L. Gomme. Gentleman's 

Magazine Library. 

3. " Romano-British Mosaic Pavements." By T. Morgan. 

Whiting. 

4. "Cirencester." By Buckman and Newmarch. 

5. " Uriconium." By Corbet Anderson. J. Russell Smith. 

6. "Roman, Celt, and Saxon." By T. Wright. A. Hall. 

Dealing chiefly with the Saxon Period: — 

1. Wright. As above. 

2. "The Making of England." By J. R. Green. Mac* 

millan. 

3. " Anglo-Saxon Britain." By G. Allen. S.P.C.K. 

General : — 

1. "Origins of English History." By C.J. Elton. Quaritch. 

2. "The Village Community." By E. Seebohm. 

3. " The Tribal Community." Same author and publisher. 

4. " The Village Community." By L. Gomme. W. Scott. 

5. " Ethnology in Folklore." By the same author. Kegan 

Paul. 

6. " The Origin of the Aryans." By Canon Taylor. W. 

Scott. 

7. " Names of Places." By the same author. 

8. "The Races of Britain." By Dr. Beddoes. Arrowsmith. 

9. "English Archaeologists' Handbook. By H. Godwin. 

Parker. 

10. "Archaeological Index." By J. Y. Akerman. J. R. 

Smith. 

11. "Pagan Ireland." By Wood-Martin. Longmans. 

(Gives a good account of corresponding times in the 
neighbouring island.) 



GENERAL INDEX 



Abyss, outcry over the, 189 

Adamnan, 64 

Adelphius, Bishop, 172 

^Edhan, King of Dalriada, 17 

yElfric, Dialogues of, 200 

iElle, 12 

^Ethelfrith, King, 16, 17 

iEthelthryth, St., 15 

Afon (water), 216 

Alban, St., 171 

Albiona, 64 

Albion, 64 

Alfred, King, 18, 184, 196 

Alltuds (aliens), 189 

Altars, Roman, 150 

Altar-stone at Stonehenge, 100 

Amphitheatres, Roman, 129, 136, 

139. 140 

Amulets, stone, 44 ; bone, 60 

Angles, 12 

Anglo-Saxon villages, 177 ; inter- 
ments, 179; swords, 179, 181; 
cemeteries, 180 ; spears, 181 ; 
shields, 181; mail, 182; orna- 
ments, 182; glass, 183; manu- 
scripts, 184 ; religion, 184 ; 
churches, 184 

Antoninus, Itineraries of, 123 

" Any-man's land," 201 

Apodyterium, 148, 150 

" Arabian Nights," the, 116 

"Arch-Druid's Barrow," 108 

Architecture, Anglo-Saxon, 186 

Ard-Ri of Ireland, the, 190 

Aries, Synod of, 172 

Arnold, Mr. M., 219 

Art of cave-dwellers, 28 ; of Neo- 
lithic period, 48 ; of Bronze 
period, 90 ; Anglo-Saxon, 184 

Arrow-heads, stone, 42 ; late use of, 
80; bronze, 80 

Arthur or Artorius, King, 16, 63, 
170 

Aryan languages, 9 



! Aryans, characteristics of undivided 
race, 68 ; and non-Aryan races, 
114 

Ash-sap given to child, 69 

Auguratorium, the, 127 

Augustine, St., Blossom Gatherings 
from, 196 

Aurelius Ambrosius, 102, 170 

Awls, flint, 22 ; bone, 28 

Axes, rough stone, construction of, 
23 ; neolithic, 38 ; how polished 
and handled, 40 ; perforated, 42 ; 
bronze, 80 ; how handled, 83 

Baby's bottle, Roman, 147 

Badagas, 115 

Barrows, long or chambered, 49 ; 

" arch-druid's," 108; round, in; 

legend about, 113; Saxon, 179 
Base-court, 175 

Basilica, Roman, 131, 134, 143 
Basques, 9, 64 
Baths, public Roman, 148 ; private, 

162 
Bay-window, 194 
Beads, of fossil shells, 24 ; of glass. 

77 

Bear, 36, 120 

Bearw (barrow), 179 

Beaver, 36, 120 

Beddoes, Dr., 210, 211, 213, 214 

Bede, the Venerable, 13 
: Beer, British, 71 

Ben (a mountain), 216 

Beorm, 178 

Beowulf, 179, 180, 181 
i Bergyon, 64 

i Bishop of Durham, his hunting- 
lodge, 190 

Black-haired races in Great Britain, 
210, 211 

Blossom Gatherings from St. Augus- 
tine, 196 

Boann (Goddess of Boyne), 114 



232 



GENERAL INDEX 



Boar, wild, 36, 120 ; sacred, 182 

Boats of Neolithic period, 36 

Boc-land, 196 

Boldon book, the, 190 

Bona dea, 116 

Boniface, St., 56 

Boon-work, 197 

Bordarii, 198 

Borough, 217 

Borough-English, 3 

Boudicca (Boadicea), 117 

Bovate, 202 

Brachycephaly (round-headedness), 
116 

Brenhin of Wales, 190 

Breton tongue, 70 

Brezonec, 70 

Bridal veil, 4 

Bridges, Celtic, 95 

Brigbote, 195 

British trackways, 121 

Britons, 10, 70; flight before 
Saxons, 13 

Brittones, 69 

Broca, Professor, 60 

Brocmael, Prince of Powys, 16 

Bronze, 69, 80 ; arrow-heads, 80 ; 
celts, 80; how handled, 83; im- 
plements, 84 ; swords, 88 ; spear- 
heads, 88 ; pins, 86 ; cauldrons, 
89 ; methods of casting, 89 ; 
articles of Roman period, 145 

Brooches, Anglo-Saxon, 182 

Bruce, Dr. Collingwood, 166 

Brythoneg, 70 

Brythonic, race, 10, 69 ; meaning of 
word, 70 ; place-names, 216 

Buckles, Anglo-Saxons, 182 

Buckman, Professor, 158 

Buhr, Anglo-Saxon, 173, 177, 217 

Buhr-bote, 195 

Bulb of percussion, 23 

Bulleid, Mr. A. , 76 

Burial-places, Neolithic, 49; position 
of dead in, 57 ; other objects 
foundin, 59; Bronze, in; Roman, 
124, 164; Anglo-Saxon, 180 

By or Byr (a cow-stall), 219 

Cesar, Julius, 116 

Camden, 120 

Campbell's ' ' West Highland Tales," 
210 

Camps of Bronze period, 93 ; Ro- 
man, 94, 125, 126 

Camulus, 113 

Canoes in lake village, 177 

Canute, King 125 



Caratacos (Caractacus), 95 

Carausius, 169 

Carpentry of lake-villagers, 78 

Carucate, 201, 202 

Casting of bronze, methods of, 89 

Castra (a camp) exploratoria, &c, 
126 ; corruptions of word, 218 

Cauldrons, bronze, 89 

Cavalry barracks, Roman, 131 

Cave-dwellers, 7 ; bodily remains of, 
31 ; social life, 33 

Ceawlin, King of the West Saxons, 
16, 18, 173 

Ceffyl (a horse), use of term, 209 

Celtic worship of the oak, 104; 
funeral customs, 112; religion, 113; 
suffixes and prefixes, 173; blood 
predominant in the West of Eng- 
land, 212 ; generally throughout 
England, 215 

Celts, the people, 9 

Cemeteries, Roman, 124! 164 ; 
Anglo-Saxon, 180 

Centwine, King, 172 

Ceolric, 18, 213 

Chambered barrow, 49 

Charon, coin for, 164 

Chatelaines, Anglo-Saxon, 182 

Chieftainship of tribe, 189 

Children's games, 3 

Chisels, bone, 47 

Christ, monogram of, in Roman 
villa, 162 

Christening feasts, ceremonies at, 
68 

Christian churches in Roman cities, 
129, 132 

Churches, Christian, Roman, 129, 
132 ; Anglo-Saxon, 184; Norman, 
191 

Cinders, trampling the, 68 

Cinque Ports, the Warden of, 12 

Circe (a church), 217 

Circles, stone, 54, 96 

Cities, Roman, 127 

Civilisation, Roman, 168 ; Anglo- 
Saxon, 186 

Clarke, Mr. G. T., 174 

Claudius, 10 

Climate of England in Neolithic 
period, 36 ; British, 71 ; Roman, 
119 

Clothing of Bronze period, 90 ; suit 
found in Jutland, 91 

" Cloutie's croft," 201 

Co-aration of the waste, 202 

Coffins, Roman, 166 

Cold-harbours, 15 



GENERAL INDEX 



233 



Columba, St., 17, 62, 64 

Combs, weaving, 48 

Comes Litoris Saxonici, 12 

Commonwealth, the Secret, 44 

Comus, 114 

Conmael, King, 16 

Coote, Mr., 170 

Copper-mines, Roman, 163 

Cores, flint, 23 

Cormac, King of Cashel, 64 

Cornish tongue, the ancient, 10, 70 

Cotarii, 198 

Crannogs, 71 ; Irish late use of, 72 ; 
Scotch do. , 73 ; St. Margaret's, 
73; Wilde, Sir W., on, 73; Mr. 
Wakeman on, 74 ; Dr. Munro on, 

74 
Cranz on Greenland burials, 58 
Cremation, in, 164, 180 
Crofters, 205 
Cruithneach, 10 
Crypt oporticus, 155 
Cultivation in open fields, 200 
Curia, the, 143 

Curmi (cuirm, cwrw = beer), 71 
Customs, funeral, 112 
Cwm (a coombe or valley), 217 

Danes, the, 18 

Danish influence on English race, 212 

Dawkins, Professor Boyd, 8, 13, 25, 
31, 36, 65, 113 

Decumana porta, 127 

Deities, tutelary, of Neolithic race, 
61 

Deneholes, 223 

Destruction of ancient buildings, 135 

Dinas (a hill-fortress), 217 

Diodorus Siculus on British dwell- 
ings, 71 

Dion Cassius on Boudicca, 117 

Distribution of land by lot, 203, 205 

Disused bits of land, 201 

Dobuni, 65 

Dogs of Neolithic people, 66 

Dolichocephaly (narrow-headed- 
ness), 65, 116 

Dolmen, 49 

" Druidical altars," 49 

Druidism, 61, 62, 114 

" Dug-out " boats, 36 

Dun (a hill-fortress), 217 

Durham, the Bishop of, his hunting 
lodge, 190 

Dykes, Anglo-Saxon, 178 

Eagle, Roman legionary, 131 
Ealdhelm, St., 144 



Earrings, 87 

Easter dues, 197 

Eborius, Bishop, 172 

Ecgberht, King, 17 

Elf-shots, 44 

Elton, Mr. C. J., 3, 61, 128, 210 

Enclosure Acts, 204 

Erw (an acre), 202 

Eskimo, relation to palaeolithic 

man, 31 
Euskarians, 9 

Evans, Mr. A., 54, 96, 102, 109 
Evans, Sir John, 22, 23, 38, 57, 82, 

85, 86, 89 

Fairies, 184 ; and mounds, 56, 113 
Fairy darts, 44; know, 113 
Farinmael, King, 16 
Fauna of England, palaeolithic, 19 ; 

neolithic, 36; of Roman period, 

120 
Female rites, British, 115 
Fibulae or brooches, 182 
Figures of men and animals found 

in caves, 28, 29 
Finger-rings, 87 
Flaking of flints by pressure, 24 
Flint implements, rough, 20; 

method of construction of, 22 ; 

use in religious ceremonies, 46 ; 

manufactories of, 46 ; saws, 66 
Flue-tiles, 156, 160 
Folk-lore in general, 5 ; of stone 

weapons, 44 ; of the Rollright 

stones, 108 ; ofmenhirion, in 
Folk-moot, 198 
Forests of Britain, 119 
Forum, the Roman, 130, 141 
Fosse, 92 

Funeral customs, Celtic, 112 
" Furrow-long," the, 200 
Fyrd, 195 

Gadhelic race, 10; place-names, 

210 
Gaelic-speaking people, 10 
Gafol, 197 

Games, children's, 3 
Gamme, the, of the Lapps, 55 
Gargantua, 114 
Garson, Dr., 32, 33, 65 
Gate of Roman city, 140 
Gavelkind, 3 
Geography of England, palaeolithic, 

17 ; neolithic, 35 
Giants' Dance, the, 102 
Gildas, 13 
Giraldus Cambrensis, 102 



234 



GENERAL INDEX 



Glacial period, 5 

Godiva's ride, explanation of story, 

115 ; the black Godiva, 116 
Goemagog, 114 
Gogmagog, 114 
Goidels, 10, 69 
Gomme, Mr. G. L., 3, 45, 63, 111, 

114, 139, 168, 191, 203, 205, 206 
Gomme, Mrs., 4 
Gould, Baring-, 192 
Graves, Roman, 164 ; Anglo-Saxon, 

179 
Gray's Inn flint, 20 
Green Gravel, song of, 4 
Green, Mr. J. R., 13, 125, 131, 172, 

173, 178, 192, 199 
Green well, Canon, 47 
Grey Wethers, 98 
Grinding-stones for axes, 39 
" Guid man's Field," the, 200 
Guest, Dr. , 16 

H addon, Prof., 212 

Hair, British method of wearing, 92 

Halimote, 197 

Hall, the, 192 

Hall of Merchants, the, 143 

Ham, the, 196 

Hardy, Mr. Thomas, 217 

Harpoons, bone, 28 

Hearth-penny, 197 

Hecatseus, 102 

Hengist, 12 

Henslow, Prof., 165 

Hercules, the labours of, 64, 141 

Herodotus, on the Poeonians, 79 

Hickes, Dr., 44 

Hide of land, the, 201 

Hoarstone, the, no 

Hlaw, 179 

Hope, Mr. St. John, 151 

Horsa, 12 

House, the primitive, 190, 191 

Hughes, Prof. M'K., 178 

Human sacrifices, 61 

Hunting lodge of the Bishop of 

Durham, 190 
Hut circles, 37 
Hwiccas, 18 
Huxley, Pjof., on Ethnology of 

Britain, 208 
Hyginus, 126 
Hyperboreans, 102 
Hypocaust, 134, 156 ; skeletons in, 

134 

Iarn, or iron language, 64 
Iberians, 9, 65 



Ida, King, 12, 215 
Illuminations, Anglo-Saxon, 184 
Imirean, 206 

Implements of savage races, 7 
Ine, King, 17, 173 
Interments, Roman, 164 ; Anglo- 
Saxon, 179 
Iomirean, 206 
Irish Elk, the, 36 
Iron works, Roman, 163 
Itineraries of Antoninus, 123 
Ivernians, 9, 64 

Joyce, Mr., 141 
Julius Caesar, 10 
Junior right, 3 
Jutes, 12 

Jutic influence on British races, 
215 

Keeps, Norman rectangular, 176 ; 

shell, 177 
Kelly, Mr., 69 
" Kenilworth," SirW. Scott's novel, 

52 
Khasis of Bengal, the, 106 
Kill (a church), 217 
Kin, the, 187 
Kin-wrecked man, 188 
King's men, the, 107 
King's peace, the, 122 
Kingstone, the, 108, no 
Kirk (a church), 217 
Kirk, the Rev. R. , 44 
Kirk-scot, 197 
Kiss in the ring, 3 
Knight's fee, a, 201 
Kurumbas, the, 114 
Kyndylan, King, 16, 21 
Kyning, 70 

Labours of Hercules, 64 

Labrum, 152 

Lachrymatories, 166 

Laen-land, 196 

Lake-dwellings, 71 

Lamps, stone, 47 ; Roman, 166 

Lancet, surgical, 147 

Land, distribution of by lot, 203, 

205 
Lang, Mr. A., 57 
Lapp Gamme, the, 55 
Lapps, the, 114 
Laver, 152 
Lead, pigs of, 163 
Leaden objects in lake villages, 78 
Legal methods as survivals, 2 
Legions, Roman, 154 



GENERAL INDEX 



235 



Lightfoot, Mr., 69 
Llan (a church), 217 
Long barrows, 49 
Lord of the manor, 195 
Lucan, 61, 117 
Lynchets, 95 

Mail, Anglo-Saxon coats of, 182 

Manor-house, development of the, 
192 

Manorial court, 197 

Manor, the lord of the, 195 

Manor of Westminster, its con- 
stituent parts, 203 

Manors belonging to abbeys, 196 

Mansiones, 124 

Manufacture of flint implements, 
22, 46 

Manuscripts, Anglo-Saxon, 184 

Mass, the, 151 

Maximius Tyrius, 104 

McEnery, the Rev. J., 25 

Mead, 71 

Menhir (PI. Menhirion), no; folk- 
lore of menhirion, in 

Merchants, Hall of, 143 

Merlin, 102 

Metempsychosis, 62 ; relics of 
beliefs in, 63 

Metheglin, 71 

Middleton, Prof., 160 

Milestones, Roman, 124 

Milliaria (milestones), 124 

Milton's " Comus," 114 

Mines, Roman, 163 

Morgan, Mr., 158 

Morlot, Mons., 40 

" Mota," the, 174 

Mounds, Anglo-Saxon, 174 

Munro, Dr., 74 

Neanderthal skull, 31 

Necklaces, 92 

Neck rests, 92 

Needle bone, 28 

Neolithic race, 8 ; definition of 

term, 19 ; bodily characteristics, 

65 ; social life, 66 
Newmarch, Mr., 158 
Nilsson, on Swedish interments, 

58 
Nodens, 113 
" No man's land," 201 
Norman use of Saxon mounds, 176 ; 

keeps, 176, 177 
Norse influence on population, 212 
Novercae, 126 
Numerals, Welsh, 209 



Oak, Celtic worship of, 104 

Oculist's stamps, 147 

Offa, King of Mercia, 17 

Open-field culture, 200 

Ornaments, personal, of cave- 
dwellers, 34 ; neolithic, 69 ; 
British, 92 

Orpheus, 158 

Ostorius Scapula, 135 

Outcry over the abyss, 189 

Ox, the wild, 36, 120 

Oxenham family, the, 63 

Ox-team, the full, 201 

Palaeolithic race, 7,19 ; definition 

of, 19 ; implements, 20 
Parsonage at Little Hempston, the, 

193 
Patrick, St., his hymn, 62 
Pavements, Roman tesselated, 136, 

157. 163 
Pen (a mountain), 216 
Pengelly, Mr., 25, 26 
Pennant, 68 
Pepys, Samuel, 44 
Perforated axe-heads, 42 
Physical characteristics of cave- 
dwellers, 31 ; of neolithic race, 

65 ; of Celts, 116 
Pickaxes, horn, 47 
Picts, 20 
Pilae, 156 
Pile-dwellings, 78 
Pins of bronze period, 86 
Pit-dwellings, 37 
Place-names, Brythonic, 216 ; 

Goidelic, 216 ; Anglo-Saxon, 

217 ; Danish, 217, 218 ; Roman, 

218 ; Norman, 219 
Platycnemism (flattening of the 

shin bone), 32, 33 
Pliny, on the ancient Britons, 115 
Ploughing, Welsh laws as to, 202 
Ploughman's complaint, the, 200 
Plough-team, the village, 198 
Pomoerium, the, 139 
Pomponius Mela, 64 
Population of districts of England, 

their characteristics, 210-215 
Posidonius, 71 

Posting stations, Roman, 124 
Pottery, neolithic, 48, 67 ; of bronze 

period, 90 ; Roman, 145 ; Samian, 

146 ; Anglo-Saxon, 182 
Praefurnium, 150, 160 
Praetoria Porta, 127 
Precariae, 197 
Pre-Celtic races, 210 



236 



GENERAL INDEX 



Preglacial implements, supposed, 6 

Primogeniture, 3 

Principalis Porta, 127 

Prittania, 10 

Prognathism (protrusion of the 

jaws), 65 
Property, tenures of, 2 
Pummery, the, 139 
Pytheas, the voyage of, 70 

QUARENTENA, 200 

Quatuor Chimini, the, 122, 123 

Rabelais, 114 

Ram Feast, the, in 

Rectitudines, 195 

Religion, the Celtic, 113 ; Anglo- 
Saxon, 184 

Removal of great stones, method of, 
106 

Restitutus, Bishop, 172 

Rhyming-score, the, 209 

Rhys, Prof., 10, 64, 69, 104 

Rings, finger and ear, 87 

River-drift men, 7 ; bodily remains, 
24 

Roads, Roman, how made, 122 

Robin Hood, 120 

Rogers, Prof. Thorold, 191 

Roland, 109 

Rollendrice, 109 

Roman occupation, nature of, n ; 
arrival, 10; departure, 11 ; roads, 
122 ; stations, 124 ; camps, 125, 
126 ; cities, 127 ; shops, 130, 134, 
142, 145 ; eagle, 131 ; tombs, 137 ; 
amphitheatres, 129, 136, 139, 140 ; 
bronze articles of, 145 ; pottery, 
145 ; baths, 148 ; temples, 150 ; 
theatre, 152 ; walls, 154, 166 ; 
legions, 154 ; sewers, 154 ; villas, 
155 ; mines, 163 ; graves, 164 ; 
civilisation, 168 

Runic letters, 181 

Sabrina, 114 

Sacred tree, 178, 179 

Sacrifices, human, 61 

Samian pottery, 146 

Sarsen stones, 98 

Saws, flint, 66 

Saxons, 12 ; buhrs, 173 ; suffixes 

and prefixes, 173 
Scrapers, flint, 22 
Seax (short knife), 179, 181 
"Secret Commonwealth," the, 144 
Seebohm, Mr., 189, 196, 204, 206 
Segontian Hercules, 141 



Sepulchral monuments and Stone- 

henge, 103 
Servus or slave, 198, 199 
Sewers, Roman, 154 
Shakespeare's Celtic blood, 213 
Shell-keep, Norman, 177 
Shield, Anglo-Saxon, 179, 181 
Shops, Roman, 130, 134, 142, 145 
Silentiary, the, 190 
Silius Italicus, 117 
Silures, 65 

Siluria, the ancient region of, 210 
Skene, Mr., 16 
Skull, the Neanderthal, 31 
Smith, Captain John, 24 
Social life of cave-dwellers, 33 ; 

neolithic, 66 ; British, 117 
Sodor and Man, the Bishop of, 211 
Spear, Anglo-Saxon, 181 
Spear-heads, bronze, 85 
Sphaeristerium, 148 
Spindle-whorls, 48 
Stations, Roman, 124 
Statuettes, terra-cotta, 147 
Statius, 128 
Stevens, Mr., no 

Stone-circles, 54, 96 ; in Arabia, 55 
Stone- worship, 56 
Stones, great, method of removal, 

106 
Stonesfield slates, 156 
Strabo, 61, 116 
Stukeley, 106, 107, 113, 135 
Sul, 148 

Sul-Minerva, 148, 150 
Suspensura, 156 

Swarthy races in Great Britain, 211 
Swords, bronze, 85 ; Anglo-Saxon, 

179, 181 
Syenite stones at Stonehenge, 100 
Synod of Aries, 172 

Tacitus, 65 

Taranis, 113 

Taylor, Canon, 216, 217, 218 

Temples, Roman, 150 

Tesselated pavements, Roman, 136, 

157. 163 
Teutates, 113 
Thadioc, Bishop, 172 
Theatre, Roman, 150 
Theon, Bishop, 172 
Theow (a thrall or slave), 197 
Thor, 184 
Thor's hammer, 43 
Thothotpu, statue of, its removal, 

106 
Throwing-stones, 42 



GENERAL INDEX 



237 



Thunder- bolt, 43 

Thurnam, Dr., 54, 58, 116 

Thurneysen, Dr., 12 

Tingle-stone, no 

Tin-mines, Roman, 164 

Tomb-stones, Roman, 137 

Ton, the, 177, 217 ; as a suffix, 

172 
Torques, 87; Gaulish, 88; name of 

Torquati, 88 
Toys, Roman, 145 
Trackways, British, 121 
Trampling the cinders, 68 
Transmigration of souls, 61 
Tree, Sacred, 178, 198 
Trepanned skulls, S9 
Triads, the Welsh, "189 
Tribal communities, 187 
Tribe, the, 187; entrance of strangers 

into, 187; relation of strangers to, 

189 ; chieftainship of, 189 
Tribunal, the, 127 
Trinoda necessitas, 195 
Tumuli, Roman, 165 
Tun, the (or ton), 177 
Twelve Tables, the laws of the, 164 
Tylor, Dr., 114 

Uisge (water), 216 
Urus (wild ox), 36, 120 

Valerius Maximus, 61 

Vallum, 92 

Veil, the Bridal, 4 

Villa, the Roman, 155 

Village, Anglo-Saxon, 177; forma- 



tion of, 196 ; lands around, 197, 
200 ; plough-team, 198 ; officials, 
198 ; council, 198 

Village community of Heisgeier, 205 

Villeins, 197 ; duties, 197 ; disabili- 
ties, 198 

Virgate, 201, 202 

Vitruvius, 117, 143 

Wager of battle, 188 

Wakeman, Mr., 74 

Walhouse, Mr., 114 

Wall, of a Roman city, 129, 132 ; 

the Roman, 154, 166 
War-board, the, 181 
Warden of the Cinque Ports, 12 
Warrior's stone, 42 
Waste, co-aration of the, 202 
Water-pipes, Roman, 160 
Watling Street (the Milky Way), 17 
Wealhas (strangers), 17 
Weaving, 48, 67 
Week-work, 197 
Weights for weaving, 48 
Welsh numerals, 209 
Whispering Knights, the, 107 
Wilde, Sir William, 73 
William the Conqueror, 125 
Window-glass, Roman, 155 
Woad, staining bodies with, 116 
Woden, 182, 184 
Wolves, 36, 120 
Worship, of oak, Celtic, 104 ; of 

stones, 56 

Yardlands, 201 



INDEX OF NAMES OF PLACES 

{Obsolete names are printed in italics) 



Abbeville, 20 

Aberffraw, 190 

Abingdon, 221 

Ablington, no 

Abury, 104 

Acling Street, 122 

Addington, 224 

Aiscandune (see Ashdown) 

Akeman Street, 135 

Alauna (see Alcester) 

Alcester, 123, 164, 218 

Aldborough, 227 

Aldington, 224 

Aldus M'Galdus, tomb of, 42 

Almondbury, 227 

Alnwick Castle, 225 

Alstonefield, 226 

Alwalton, 224 

Ambleside, 226 

Ambrey, Croft, 93 

Amiens, 20 

Anderida, Forest of, 120, 164 

Andredsweald, the, 120, 164 

Angeln, 13 

Anglesey, 227 

Aquce Suits (see Bath) 

Arranmore, 212 

Arbor Low, 222 

Archeafield, 214 

Arden, Forest of, 119, 171, 213 

Arthur's Cave, King, 223 

Hall, King, 164 

Quoit, King, 227 

Round Table, King, 140 

Seat, King, 223 
Ashbourne, 226 
Ashby Scar, 219, 226 
Ashdown (Aiscandufte), 121 
Ashendon, 182 
Atcham, 15, 132 
Aubury Camp, 224 



Avebury, 104, 113, 226 
Avening, 58 
Avisford, 165 
Avon, River, 216 
Aylesford, 50, 224 

BADBURY Rings (Mons Badonicus), 

IS. 22 3 
Badonicus, Mo?is (see Badbury) 
Bakewell, 223 
Ballaglass, 227 
Balsham Ditch, 222 
Bar bury, 226 
Barle River, 96 
Bartlow Hills, 165. 223 
Barra, 210 
Barton Mere, 226 
Barvas, 212 

Baschurch (Bassa's Churches), 16 
Baslow, 222 

Bassa's Churches (see BASCHURCH) 
Bath (Aquce Suits), 124, 147, 148, 

150, 225 
Battlebury, 226 
Beacon Hill, 223 
Beaudesert, 219 
Beaulieu, 219 
Beaumont, 219 
Beckhampton, 105 
Belfield, 225 
Belford, 225 
Bellas Knap, 223 
Bellerden, 224 
Benjerlaw, Mount, 217 
Ben Rhydding, 216 
Berkhampstead, 174 
Bevere, 121 
Beverley, 121 
Bignor, 226 
Birmingham, 119, 178 
Bishop's Castle, 163 



INDEX OF NAMES OF PLACES 



239 



Blois Hall, 227 

Blowing-stone, 221 

Bodbury Ring, 225 

Bodnor, 227 

Borcovicus (see HOUSESTEADS) 

Boreham, 226 

Boroughbridge, 227 

Borough Hill, 225 

Boscawen, 222 

Boskednan Circle, 222 

Bowness, 166 

Boyne, River, 114 

Bradford-on-Avon, 184, 226 

Brading, 223 

Bramber, 175 

Brandon, 46, 224, 226 

Branodunum (see Leintwardine) 

Bravinium (see Leintwardine) 

Bredon Hill, 223 

Brent Ditch, 222 

Brent Knoll, 225 

Bridgeness, 153 

Bridlington, 227 

Bridport, 121 

Brixham, 222 

Bryn Celliden, 227 

yr-Ellyllon, 121 
Broadway, 121 
Buckland Rings, 223 
Buckle Street, 121 
Buckland Camp, 222 
Bulbarrow, 223 
Burgh Castle, 224 

Hill, 225 
Burn Moor, 222 
Burrington, 225 
Bury Ditches, 225 
Bury St. Edmunds, 226 
Buxton, 222 
Bwedd Arthur, 227 

Cadbury Banks, 226 

Camp, 225 
Caer Caradcc, 95, 219, 225 

Gybi, 227 
Caerleon-on-Usk (/sea Silurum), 

124, 129, 140, 150, 154, 174, 218, 

219, 224 
Caernarvon, 219 
Caesar's Camp, 226 
Cainhoe Castle, 221 
Caistor, 15, 218, 224 
Calcaria (see TADC aster) 
Calleva Attrebatum (see Sil- 

chester) 
Camboritum, 15, 129 
Cambridge, 222 
Camtdodunum (see Colchester) 



Canterbury, 224 
Cardiff, 175 
Cardigan Bay, 35 
Cardinal's Cap, 226 
Carisbrooke, 223 
Carnac, no 
Cartmel, 224 
Castel-an-Dinas, 222 
Castle Acre, 224 

Carrock, 222 

Dykes, 224 

Eden, 223 

Neroche, 225 

Rigg, 222 
Cas Tor, 222 
Castor, 146, 218, 225 
Caterham, 226 
Cauldron, 226 
Cefn, 37, 227 
Cerne Abbas, 223 
Chalbury Hill, 95 
Charlton Abbots, 57 
Cham wood Forest, 120, 224 
Chart, 224 

Charterhouse-on-Mendip, 225 
Cheddar, 225 
Chedworth, 161, 172, 223 
Cheltenham, 161 
Chepstow, 227 
Cheshunt Camp, 224 
Chessel Down 223 
Chester (Deva), 16, 120, 129, 150, 

154, 222 
Chester Hill, 225 
Chester-le-Street, 218 
Chesterton, 218, 222, 224 
Chichester (Regnum), 150 
Chisenbury, 226 
Cholesbury, 222 
Christchurch, 223 

Chun, 51, 222 ' 

Church Hole, 222 

Stretton, 95, 121 
Cinderford, 164 
Cirencester (Corinium), 124, 135, 

140, 157, 158, 223 
Cissbury, 226 
Clatford Bottom, 226 
Clee Hill, 225 
Clevedon, 225 
Clichy, 25 
Clun, no, 214, 225 
Clyde, Firth of, 168 
Clynnog, 227 
Colchester (Camulodunutn), 121, 

I29, 150, 217, 218, 223 
Coldrum, 224 
Comar, the Ford of, 42 



240 



INDEX OF NAMES OF PLACES 



Congresbury, 202 

Corinium (see CIRENCESTER) 

Cornwall, 164 

Corra, 227 

Cotswold Hills, the, 135, 161, 214, 

223 
Coventry, 115 
Cowlon, 222 
Craven, 227 

Arms, 225 
Cress well Crags, 222 
Crick-stone, the, 222 
Croft Ambrey, 93, 223 
Cronk Airey, 227 
Crosby Ravenhurst, 226 
Cwms, the, 121, 217 

D^egstone (see Dawstone) 

Dalton, 224 

Dalriada, 16 

Danby Moor, 227 

Dane's Camp, 225 

Darent, 224 

Dartmoor, 95, in, 195, 222 

Dawns Maen, 222 

Dawstone (Daegstone), 17 

Dean, Forest of, 120, 163, 214 

Moor, 222 
Dee, River, 120 
Deer hurst, 223 
Denton, 222 
Deorham (Dyrham), 16 
Derby, 219 
Deva (see Chester) 
Devil's Arrows, 227 

Den, 226 

Dyke, 222 

Quoits, 225 
Devizes, 175, 226 
Ditnetia, 190 
Dinton, 222 
Dolebury, 225 
Dolemoors, the, 203 
Doncaster, 218 
Dorchester (Durnovaria), 94, 121, 

128, 139, 223 
Dorstone, 223 
Dover, 224 

Doward's Hill, Great, 164 
Drewsteignton, 222 
Dunium, 94, 217 
Dunmow, 216 
Dunstable, 123, 221 
Dunster, 94, 175, 225 
Duntesbourne Abbots, no 
Durham, 175, 223 
Durnovaria (see DORCHESTER) 
Durobrivce (see CASTOR) 



Duruthy, Cave of, 29 
Dyvnaint, 17 

Earith, 224 
Easington, 225 
East Kennett, 105 
Eastlow Hills, 226 
Eboracum (see York) 
Eddisbury, 222 
Edington (Ethandun), 18 
Egbury Castle, 223 
Eggardon, 223 
Egremont Castle, 222 
Egton Grange, 227 
Eguisheim, 25 • 
Ellesborough, 222 
Elmet, Forest of, 171 
Ely, 175 
Engleland, 13 
Enstone, 225 

Ermine Street, the, 123, 135 
Esk, River, 216 
Ethandun (see Edington) 
Etocetum (see Wall) 
Exe, River, 216 
Exeter, 173, 218 
Exmoor, 95 

Faddiley (Fethanleah), 16 
Fair ford, 223 
Farnham, 223 
Farthington, 225 
Fenny Stratford, 123 
Fethanleah (see Faddiley) 
Fisherton, 37, 226 
Forth, Firth of, 168 
Fosse Way, the, 123, 135 
Frankwell, 173 
Fulford, 222 

Gatacre Hall, 191 

Gavr Inis, 54 

Gidleigh, 222 

Glastonbury, 77^ 225, 226 

Glen Darragh, 227 

Glevum (see Gloucester) 

Gloucester (Glevum), 122, 128, 129, 

2I 8 
Godman Chester, 218 
Godwin's Castle, 223 
Gogmagog Hills, the, 114 
Gothland, 227 
Gower, 227 
Gracedieu, 219 
Graham's Dyke, 168 
Grange-over-Sands, 224 
Grantchester, 218 
Grateley, 223 



INDEX OF NAMES OF PLACES 



241 



Gray's Inn, London, 20 
Great Chesterton, 225 
Great Doward Hill, 164 
Green Road, the, 122 
Grey Wethers, the, 222 
Grimes' Graves, 46, 226 
Grimsby, 219 
Grimsby Castle, 221 
Grimsdyke, the, 224 
Grimspound, 222 
Gwent, 190 

Hamdon Camp, 225 
Harborough Banks, 226 
Harbynrigg, 226 
Hardingstone, 225 
Harwood Dale, 227 
Haydon Ditch, 222 
Headingham, 175 
Heathery Burn, 223 
Hebrides, the, 63, 205, 212 
Heisgeier, 205 
Hempston, Little, 193 
Henbury Castle, 222 
Hen Dinas, 95 
Hengistbury, 223 
Hereford, 124, 224 
Herefordshire Beacon, 95, 223 
Hexham, 225 
High Cross, 123, 124 
High Down, 226 
High Tor, 224 
Hoarstone, the, 225 
Hob Hurst's Hut, 22 
Hod Hill, 223 
Holdgate, 139 
Holgate, 176 
Holne, in 

Housesteads (Bo)xovuus), 167 
Hoyle, 227 
Huddersfield, 227 
Huntingdon, 124 
Hunsborough, 225 
Hurlers, the, 222 

ICKXINGHAM, 122, 182 

Icknield Street, the, 122 
11am, 226 

Ingarsby, 182, 224 
Tngleborough, 227 
Irchester, 225 

J sea Silurian {see CAERLEON) 
Isle of Man, 56, 212, 227 
Isle of Wight, 223 

Jervaulx, 219 
Jewry Wall, the, T32 



Kelsborough, 222 
Kemerton Camp, 223 
Kempsey, 227 
Kenchester {Magna), 124 
Kendal Castle, 222, 226 
Kennett, East, 105 

West, 54, 58, 105, 226 
Kent's Hole Cave, 25, 222 
Kesserloch, 29 
Keswick, 222 
Kilkenny, 217 
Killing Pits, 227 
Kilsmore Bank, 224 ' 
King Barrow, 226 
Kingsclere, 223 
Kingsdown, 224 
King's Scar Cave, 13 
Kirby, 217 
Kirkdale, 227 
Kirkhead, 224 
Kirk Oswald, 217 
Kit's Coty House, 50, 224 
Knave's Castle, 226 
Knighton, 225 
Knock Maraidhe, 58 
Knook Castle, 226 

Lactodorum {see TowCESTER) 

Ladle Hill, 223 

La Madelaine, Cave of, 28, 33 

Lancaster, 218 

Lanchester, 218, 223 

Laugerie Basse, 29, 33 

Lanyon, 51 ; quoit, 222 

Launceston, 175 

Leamington, 178 

Ledbury, 223 

Leeds, 171, 227 

Leicester {RatceY 124, 132, 224 

Leintwardine {Branodunum or 

Braviniinn), 124, 224 
Lewes, 175 
Lewis, 211 
Lichfield, 226 
Lilleshall, 132 
Lincoln {Lindum Colonia), 124, 129, 

140, 175, 224 
Lindum Colonia {see Lincoln) 
Liskeard, 222 
Little Hempston, 193 
Littlington, 164, 224 
Llanymynech, 163, 224 
Lledr, Afon, 216 
Llugwy, Afon, 216 
Llyffni, 227 
Llyn Ogwen, 121 
Lochmariaquer, 48 
Logan Stone, 222 

Q 



242 



INDEX OF NAMES OF PLACES 



Londinium (see London) 

London (Londinium), 129 224 

LongCompton, 108 

Long Hole, 227 

Longmynd, the, 123 

Loose, 224 

Lordingshaws, 225 

Lowick, 224 

Ludbrook, 227 

Ludlow, 93, 179 

Lugbury, 226 

Lydney, 121 

Lymington, 222 

Lymne, 224 

Machynlleth, 163 

Maesbury, 225 

Mitchell's Fold, 225 

Magna (see K.ENCHESTER) 

Maiden Bower, 221 

Maiden Castle (Dors.), 94, 223 ; 

(Westm.), 226 
Mai pas, 219 
Malvern, 95, 223 
Mancetter (Manduesedum), 226 
Marlborough, 226 ; Down, 99 
Martin's Pomeroy, St.,, London, 

J 39 
Marshpool, 225 
Masbury, 225 
Massat, Cave of La, 29 
Maughold, 227 
Maumbury, 139 
Meare, 225, 226 
Melandra Castle, 222 
Mendip Hills, the, 163, 172 
Merivale, 222 
Mildenhail, 226 
Minehead, 35 
Moel-y-Gaer, 227 
Mold, 121 
Montacute, 175 
Mortimer Fielding, 129 
Mount, the, 226 
Mount Murray, 227 
Mouslow Castle, 222 

Nant Cribba, 175 
Nant Francon, 121 
Neanderthal, 31 
Ness, 211 
Nether Swell, 223 
Newark, 124 
Newbury, 221 
Newcastle- on-Tyne, 225 
Newgrange, Co. Meath, 53 
Newton Abbot, 27 
Nidderdale, 6^ 



Nine Ladies' circle, 222 

Maidens, 222 
Nordy Bank, 225 
Northampton, 225 
North Legh, 225 
Norton Camp, 225 
Norwich, 175, 224 

Offa's dyke, 17, 178, 224 

Old Oswestry, 95 

Old bury, 226 

Old Rothbury, 225 

Sarum, 94, 125, 176, 226 
"Old Works," the, 132 
Orwell, 222 
Oswestry, 94 ; old , 95 
Ouse, River, 216 
Overton, 105 
Ozingell, 170, 224 

Painswtck, 223 

Paviland, 227 

Pendarves Quoit, 222 

Pe?igwym (see Shrewsbury) 

Penlan, 227 

Penmaenmawr, 227 

Pentre Ifan, 227 

Penrith, 222 

Perigord, 33 

Perthi Chwareu, 227 

Pitney, 163 

Plas Newydd, 51, 227 

Pioy Field, the, in 

Pontefract, 175 

Porchester (Porfus Mangus), 223 

Porthamel, 227 

Portbridge, 222 

Port way, the, 123 

Poundbury, 128 

Prestonbury Castle, 222 

Puxton, 202 

Quarley Hill, 223 
Queensborough, 224 

" Rat^ " (see Leicester) 

Ravenstonedale, 226 

Rawlsbury, 223 

Rea, River, 120 

Reading, 129, 222, 223 

Reculver (Regulbium), 21 

Redbourn, 224 

Regnum (see Chichester) 

Restormel, 175 

Richborough (Rutupice), 129, 14; 

224 
Ridgeway, the, 123 
Rievaulx, 210 



INDEX OF NAMES OF PLACES 



243 



Risinghoe Castle, 221 
Robin Hood's cave, 29, 222 
Rochester. 218 
Rollright, 107, 225, 226 
Roman codde, 224 
Rougham, 165, 226 
Roundway Castle, 226 
Royston, 164, 224 
Rudstone, the, 227 
Rushmore, 38 

RutupiiB (see RlCHBOROUGH) 
Ryknield Street, the, 120 
Rylstone, 90 

Saffron Walden, 223 

St. Albans (Verulamium), 123, 152, 

171, 224 
Catherine's Hill, 223 
David's, 227 
Salisbury, 226 
Sandy, 221 
Sarum, Old (Sorbiodunum), 94, 125, 

176, 226 
Scalehouse Barrow, 90 
Scarborough, 227 
Scratchbury, 226 
Scor Hill Down, 222 
Scrobbesbyrig (see Shrewsbury) 
Seaton, 124 
Senlac, 80 
Settle, 226 
Shap, 226 
Sherborne, 175 
Sherringham, 224 
Sherwood Forest, 120, 2^5 
Shetland, Islands, 211 
Shirley, 226 
Shrewsbury (Celt. Pengwym ; Sax. 

Scrobbesbyrig), 17, 134, 173, 225 
Sidbury Castle, 222 
Sidmouth, 222 
Silbury Hill, 105, 107, 226 
Silchester (Calleva Attrebatum), 

129, 140, 141, 148, 150, 152, 171, 

222, 223 
Sittingbourne, 182 
Sleaford, 180 
Snead, 163, 225 
Sneefell, 212 
Snowdonia, 120 
Sorbiodunum (see Old Sarum) 
Southam, 115 
Speen, 218 
Spey, 32 

Spindleston Camp, 225 
Spinster's Rock, 222 
Spoonley, 223 
Stainmore, 226 



Stalybridge, 222 
Standlow, 222 
Stanlake, 221 
Stanton Drew, 225 

Harcourt, 225 

Moor, 222 
Stapeley Hill, 225 
Stonehenge, 96, 112, 226 
Stony Littleton, 226 

Stratford, 123 
Stourton, 226 
Stowe Heath, 182 
Stow-on-the-Wold, 121 
Stratford, 124 
Strathclyde, 16 
Stretford, 124 
Stretton, 124 
Sudreyjar, 212 
Symond's yat, 223 

Tadcaster (Calcaria), 125, 227 

Tarraby, 150 

Tarr Steps, 95, 225 

Taunton, 17, 226 

Thesfield, 224 

Thetford, 224 

Thornborough, 227 

Thornbury, 227 

Tickhill, 175 

Tittensor, 226 

Titternhoe Castle, 221 

Torquay, 27, 222 

Totnes, 193 

Towcester, 123, 225 

Treryn dinas, 222 

Trevethy quoit, 222 

Tripoli, 103 

Turnworth, 223 

Tutbury, 175 

Uffington Castle, 221 
Uley Barrow, 52, 58, 223 
Upchurch, 145 
Uriconium (see Wroxeter) 
Usk, River, 216 

Verulamium (see St. Albans) 
Victoria Cave, 227 

Wales, North, 16, 17 

West, 16, 17 
Wall (Etocetum), 121, 123 
Wall hills (Heref.), 223, (Wore.) 

227 
Wallingford, 17 
Wall's End, 166 
Wanborough, 18, 213 
Wansdyke, the, 184 



244 



INDEX OF NAMES OF PLACES 



Wareham, 128, 223 

Watchet, 172 

Watling Street, the, 123 

Weald, the, 164 

Wednesbury, 184 

Week St. Laurence, 203 

Wellington (Som. ), 172 

Wellow, 225 

West Kennett, 54, 58, 105 

Westminster, 203 

Wetton, 226 

Weyland Smith's forge, 

221 
Weymouth, 95, 121, 223 
Whitby, 219 
Whitbeck, 222 
White Horse, 52, 221 

Vale of, 18, 121 
Wilbraham, 222 
Wimbledon, 226 
Winchcombe, 223 
Winchester, 218, 223 
Windsor, 175 



52, 



Winsford, 96, 225 

Wirral peninsula, the, 219 

Wixford, 123 

Woodbury, 227 

Woodchester, 223 

Woodcuts Common, 38 

Wood End, 120 

Wooton Wawen, 120 

Worcester, 128, 218, 227 

Worlebury, 225 

Worthing, 226 

Wrekin, 131 

Wretham, 224 

Wroxeter {Uriconium), 15, 124, 131, 

138, 218, 225 
Wye, River, 163, 164 
Wyre, Forest of, 120 

Yarnbury, 95, 226 

Yarrow, 217 

York [Eboracum), 125, 129, 154, 227 

Zennor Quoit, 222 



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